































































































































































































































































































* 



































THE 


FIRST-SIGHT PHENOMENA 

OF 

HISTORIC TIME, 

AND THE 

OCULAR MECHANISM 

OF 

HISTORIC MEMORY^- 

DEVELOPING ^ 

ORGANIC PRINCIPLES FOR THE MOST RAPID POSSIBLE ACQUISITION AND 
AFFIXMENI OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE, 

AND FORMING 

AN ELUCIDATORY AND ILLUSTRATIVE COMPANION 

TO THE FIFTH EDITION, COLOURED, OF 

MAJOR BELLS TWENTY-FIVE ROYAL FOLIO 

^fiitrfjronoJjtstoric au & i3iograpl)i'c ^Tables. 

f 

BY 

MAJOR JAMES BELL, 

LATE OF THE EAST YORK MILITIA. 


“ Order is the Soul of Memory.” 

“ The Eye is the most faithful Organ of Memory.” 

» *> 
t o 

* . > > > 

LONDON: 

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR; AND SOLD BY 

ROBERT BALDWIN, 47, PATERNOSTER ROW. 




M.DCCC.LIII. 







LONDON: 

PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, 
angel court, skinner street. 




96 ? 



c 


t 





^93 


DEDICATION 


To the 7066 Subscribers to, and Purchasers of, Major 
Bell’s 25 Royal FolhATables of Universal History, 
Universal Literature, and the Several Schools of 
Painting. 

(FIFTH EDITION, COLOURED.) 


To the 7066 Subscribers to, and Purchasers of, my 
labormus Tabular Presentment, in 25 Boyal Folio 
Charts, of the whole Classified Surface of His¬ 
torical, Literary, and Artistical Time, I respectfully 
dedicate my present Publication, elicited, as it has 
been, by the numerous applications that have been 
addressed to me by subscribers to the Tables, and 
expressly prepared as an elucidatory and illustra¬ 
tive COMPANION to that tabular work, which is 
itself so largely indebted to the generously-fostering 
bounty of those numerous patrons to whom this 
Dedication is devoted, for the many improvements 
(and, as it is hoped, largely-increased practical 
utibty) which, in the course of Five Editions, I 
have had the opportunity of introducing into it. 

And while I thus render homage to my Sub¬ 
scribers and the Purchasers of my tabular work, 



IV 


DEDICATION. 


as the practical patrons and promoters of my 
earnestly-directed . efforts for the introduction, into 
the vast Empire of Britain, of an OCULAK Sys¬ 
tem of Chronological Classification, on the broadest 
scale, for the more rapid and scientific advance¬ 
ment of the Great Study of History, I hail 
with eagerness so appropriate and so coveted an 
occasion for re-testifying how vividly and fervidly 
I cherish the recollection of all the variously- 
displayed acts of cordial courtesy and protective 
kindness with which, during the protracted period 
of a widely-extended explanatory literary canvass, 
I was so graciously honoured and befriended hy 
that numerous, talented, and influential body of 
Subscribers to my Historical Tables, including 
personages of the highest eminence and of the most 
exalted station, TO WHOM THIS humble but heart¬ 
felt DEDICATION IS, WITH OVERFLOWING GRATI¬ 
TUDE, INSCRIBED by 

Their earnestly-devoted, obedient, 

and humble Servant, 

JAMES BELL. 


Scarborough, August 20th, 1853. 


PREFATORY ADDRESS 


to i;rs 

BBITISH PUBLIC. 


Next to communing with the ever-treasured and 
beloved members of my own family and my inti¬ 
mately-connected relatives and personal friends, 
my greatest pleasure may be said to be to com¬ 
municate with the friends, the patrons, and the 
real amateurs of that great study to which my own 
mind and my own time have so passionately and 
perseveringly been devoted. 

Having had the delightful experience, as I shall 
ever have the delightful recollection, that my two 
eldest and excellent daughters, at the early ages of 
eleven and nine, whom it was my solace, during a 
long and severe illness, to instruct, were capable of 
thoroughly mastering and consecutively repeating, 
by rote, without one single error, as I earnestly aver, 
the dates and duration of all the several dynasties 
and successive reigns on historical record, in every 
sovereign State of modern Europe, I was fully 
authorized and stimulated further to direct my 

A 3 



VI 


PREFATORY ADDRESS. 


thoughts and practical experiments to the advance¬ 
ment of scientific historical teaching. These ex¬ 
periments, I believe, are admitted to have succeeded 
beyond all expectation. 

And, indeed, it hardly needed the confirming 
testimony of actual experience, to prove that a 
systematic principle of historic reading and teach¬ 
ing must triumph over a no !-system principle . . . 
a no [-system principle, to which, wondrously 
enough, we have, for century after century, been 
so tenaciously adhering. 

In the frequent repetition of my experiments, I 
have become variously and daily more and more 
confirmed in the twofold conviction—1st, of the per¬ 
fect practicability of conveying a considerable body 
of valuable historical instruction to young persons 
at a very early period of life ; and 2ndly, that the 
main secret, or tact, of communicating such instruc¬ 
tion, lies in securing the co-operation of the eye 
and the mind; or, in other words, in making the 
eye and the mind work together. 

The philosophic Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam 
(1560-1626), recommends, “as the surest division 
of human learning,” that which is derived from 
“ the three faculties of the soul,” viz. “ reason, 
imagination, and memory 

Philosophy being relative to Reason ; 

Poetry „ to Imagination; 

and HISTORY „ to MEMORY. 

MEMORY, therefore, being the great faculty which, in 
the teaching and the acquirement of history, we 


PREFATORY ADDRESS. vii 

have first, and most largely, to address, upon 
Memory it is that I have naturally based my 
systematic principle of acquiring for ourselves, or of 
communicating to others, historical knowledge. 

And Memory I have alike addressed through the 
Eye, so truly described by Horace to he “ the 
most faithful organ of memory; ” and through 
that ORDER, which has so emphatically been pro¬ 
nounced to be “ the Soul of memory 

The whole system, however, that I have intro¬ 
duced, and am now seeking to carry into more 
extended use, may most appropriately he designated 
an OCULAR one, since the MEMORY OF THE EYE is 
that to which it makes its most constant appeal; 
and since THE EYE is the organ to which I have 
made even “ ORDER 5 ’ subservient, by bringing the 
whole of the coevally-columnar array of nations, 
compassed within each of the consecutive great 
leaves of historic time, under such a rigidly-syn¬ 
chronised form of classified and coloured present¬ 
ment, that the eye may ever have at its command a 
ready and rapid—an eagle-winged flight over the 
whole tabulated surface of the historical, literary, 
and artistical records of man. 

In the course of the five editions, to which, 
thanks to the generous patronage of my literary 
encouragers (to whom this elucidatory and illustra¬ 
tive Comgmnion is gratefully dedicated), my tabular 
work of 25 royal folio coloured Historical, Lite¬ 
rary, and Artistical Charts has attained, I have 
(especially in the fifth edition), by means of colour- 


viii PREFATORY ADDRESS. 

ing, by new varieties of type, by rigid re-examina¬ 
tion of the dates, and by very laborious and greatly 
improved readjustments of the synchronical arrange¬ 
ment, so far, I hope, succeeded in perfecting my 
OCULAR Scheme of Organic Classification, 
that hardly any further alterations whatever, in 
future editions, will be needed. 

Our groundwork of historical presentment, then, 
being fully worked out, my hope is, in the present 
COMPANION to my Tables, to raise up, upon that 
groundwork, such a superstructure of further fully- 
explained aids and mnemonical appliances, as may 
effectively and permanently advance the acquisition 
of a scientific and philosophic acquaintance with all 
the great features and influences of the Past, 
amidst that wondrous, and hitherto unsurpassed, 
British people, who are leaving so largely their own 
historical impress on the PRESENT Grand Era of 
historical time.* 

JAMES BELL. 

Scarborough, August 20th, 1853. 


* As a most desirable accompaniment to the Royal Folio 
Chronological Tables, and the present elucidatory and 
illustrative Companion to those Tables, it is in contempla¬ 
tion, as soon as the necessary number of Subscribers shall 
have been obtained, to publish a short series of Progres- 
sional Maps of Political Geography, Asian, European, and 
African, territorially illustrative of the most memorable 
changes of empire depicted in the author’s Consecutive 
Grand Regions of Historical Time. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


BOOK I., SECTION I. 

UNRECORDED TIME, from 4004 to 2000 before Christ; 
occupying 2004 years. Man in Barbarism —Classi¬ 
fication of Barbaric Life; with interspersed Prolu- 
sional Remarks on the Study of History. Perplexed 
Origin of Nations, p. 39. Chronological Difficulties 
and Anomalies: Supererogatory Official Cleverness— 
the Cfohappy New- Year, pp. 47, 48. The inchoate 
Monster-pile of Legislation, pp. 14, 15. Catlin’s Il¬ 
lustrations of Savage Life, pp. 56, 210 to 212. 


BOOK I., SECTION II. 

ANCIENT TIME, from 2000 before to 476 after Christ; 
comprising 2476 years. Formation and progressive 
Changes—Rise, Meridians, and Passing away—of 
Empire, in the four Great Regions of Ancient Time, 
illustrative of the Tabular Teaching of the Science 
of History. The Columnar Form, and Colouring, of 
the successive Tabular Sheets, pp. 61, 62. Mnemoni- 
cal Chronology, p. 65. The Autobiographic Inscrip¬ 
tion of Darius I. Hystaspes, at Behistiin , p. 69. The 
Roman Republic ; the Roman Empire : Roman Rule 
in Britain; the Boadicean Coin, p. 80. 

ANCIENT LITERARY TIME, Hebrew (and other Oriental), 
Greek, and Roman Writers, to 400 after Christ. 




X 


TABLE OE CONTENTS. 


INTERTEXTURE OF ANCIENT ) First-Sight Phenomena 
AND EARLY MODERN TIME. ) of TableY.,the earliest 
compartment of Modern Time, from 476 to 888 
after Christ; occupying 412 years. Formation of 
Modern States. Goths, Franks, and Yandals, p. 96. 
General Ignorance in Alfred’s Day, p. 121. Rise, 
Meridian, and Disseverance of Early Modern Empire; 
Franks, and Saracens. Saxons. Empire of the Ocean, 
Sea-Kings of Scandinavia, p. 110. Contemporary 
Identifications of remarkable, and easily tenable 
Character. Charlemagne, Harun-ur-Raschid, and 
Alfred: their Ocular Emplacement is triangular , 
p. 126, and thus immovable from Memory. The 
Monarchs of a Thousand Years, p. 127. Harun’s 
Presents, p. 124, Elephant, Clepsydra. Charlemagne’s 
Signet in his Sword, p. 123. Alfred ; and Alfred’s 
Ashes, pp. 128 to 154. Plea for the local Preserva¬ 
tion and Perpetuation of the Monumental, Inscrip- 
tional, and remote Architectural Remains of our 
Isle—Carisbroke Castle, p. 142. Empire of the 
Desert, pp. 157 to 208 —Khalifs of Medina, Da¬ 
mascus, and Bagdad: the Lamp of Science and 
Learning, during European darkness, is kept burning 
by the Arabs. Ecclesiastical Architecture, p. 19L 
Paradoxical and inappropriate Conversion of » Jewish 
into Christian Names, p. 194. 

The whole, conjointly with the appended “ TABU¬ 
LAR TEACHER OF THE THEORY AND THRIFT OF 
COMBINATIVE AND CORROBORATIVE HISTORIC ME¬ 
MORY,” ILLUSTRATIVELY AND VARIOUSLY EXHIBITING THE 

OCULAR Elements and Agencies of rapid Tabular 
Historic Teaching; and the NATURAL Mnemonics of 
Historical Chronology. 



FAC-SIMILE 

of 

A Gold or Electrum {t. e. an argentiferous gold ore) 
coin of the reign of BOADICEA, the earliest recorded 
British queen, referred to in pages 80 and 81 of this 
work, now in possession of the Ashmolean Museum, 
Oxford. 


THE OBVERSE THE REVERSE 



OR CONVEX SIDE. OR CONCAVE SIDE. 

This coin, which is dish-shaped or hollowed on 
one side, and slightly convex on the other side, was 
found at the village of Stanwick, a few miles from 
Oxford, in 1849 [being the year of the'millennial 
celebration of the birth of Alfred the Great, at Wantage, in 
Berkshire, 25th October, 1849], amongst gravel carted 
away in the formation of a watercourse, in a newly- 
enclosed common field. 

On the reverse or hollowed side is a rudely-exe¬ 
cuted horse, with a well-formed chariot wheel, and 
various rings, as well as small crosses or stars, and 
balls, indicative, most probably, of the value of the 
coin; and on the obverse or raised side is the word 



ODVOC, thus wanting the initial B; while, singu¬ 
larly enough, the only other extant coin (and, pre¬ 
viously to 1849, the solitary specimen of coinage) of 
Boadiceas day> which is preserved at the British 
Museum, bears only BOD VO, thus wanting the 
terminational C to complete the BODVO-C, 
there not being sufficient space on the surface of 
either coin to admit the entire name. 

The fac-simile was obtained through the obliging 
and handsome kindness of P. B. Duncan, Esq., M.A., 
the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 


NOTICE. 

A Supplementary Preparation Book for Historical Examina¬ 
tion, entitled 

THE TABULAR TEACHER OF THE THEORY AND THRIFT 

OF 

COMBINATIVE AND CORROBORATIVE HISTORIC MEMORY, 

Exhibiting the ocular and natural Mnemonics of Historical 
Chronology, and embracing the same amount of time as the 
first book of the Elucidatory and Illustrative Companion to 
the Royal Folio Tables, will, for the convenience of class use, 
be published herewith in a detached form. 

Price 4s. Qd. 






BOOK I 


SECTION I. 

UNRECORDED TIME, from 4004? to 2000 before 

CHRIST, EMBRACING A PERIOD OF 2004 
YEARS. 

MAN IN BARBARISM; WITH, INTERMIXED, PRO- 
LUSIONAL REMARKS ON THE STUDY OF 
HISTORY. 

To run over all that has been said, or might be 
said, in praise of History, would be tediously trite to 
the instructed Reader. 

We shall, therefore, briefly remind ourselves that 
history, amongst its other attributes, is the sanctuary 
of the good and wise, the perpetual pillory of the 
perverse and bad; that it is the communing of the 
mind of the present with the mind of the past; and 
that to be at home in History is to he carried at 
pleasure into the midst of the stirring spirits and 
the arousing scenes of all times and of all climes. 

Our business is not with the praise of History, 
but with the means by which it may be the most 
effectively and systematically pursued. 

B 



2 


PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 


In asking for the fostering aid and indulgent 
protection of the British public to my present 
humble effort toward the advancement of a branch 
of study of such acknowledged vast importance, as 
is the history of the human species, I seem to have 
at least one claim to their attention, namely, that 
this study, although of such magnitude and interest, 
did not appear, in this country, up to the time that 
I introduced my condensed Ocular System of 
Classified Tabular Presentment, to have received 
that full attention which it so eminently called for. 
Great pains had been bestowed to simplify and 
render more easy of acquisition every other branch 
of knowledge. Lectures throughout the country 
had been delivered upon almost every stock and 
scion of human research and speculation; all sorts 
of ologies have been started and run after; but how 
few—if indeed any —had been the published at¬ 
tempts to systematize the study of the universal 
history of man, as a whole, i. e . as a science 
complete ? Or, whatever might have been the 
attempts, efficiency of scheme, it was fully acknow¬ 
ledged and felt, there had been none to reduce to 
scientific principles the natural aidances to the 
study of history, upon the most extensive scale, of 
course, I mean; for, without pursuing it upon the 
broadest basis, it canbebut of little use either towards 
the expansion or improvement of the understanding. 

The manifold advantages of the ocular principle 
of tabularizing the whole surface of historic time, 
which many years ago I brought before the public, 


UNRECORDED TIME. 3 

BARBARISM. 

I believe now alone require to be more practically 
and fully understood, to be universally adopted for 
instructional as well as referential purposes. 

Until a correlative depiction of the earth's sur¬ 
face had been effected by means of geographical 
maps , the correlative position of place was a chaos 
to the human mind; and equally vague and vain 
to the memory ever has been, and ever will be, the 
attempted recollection of the distributive position of 
universal historical events, until chronological 
maps , presenting a visible surface, depictive of the 
correlative and classified hearings of the great pro- 
gressional aggregates of historical time, shall be 
brought as largely and habitually into daily use, 
alike for reference and for instruction, as are now 
geographical maps. 

Latitudes and longitudes, arithmetically applied, 
are only chargeable upon memory to a very limited 
extent. Nor can arithmetical dates he distribu- 
tively affixed without the conjunctive agency of 
order and the eye. 

Blindfold is the reading of History without the 
two eyes of chronology and geography ; and blind 
are the two eyes of chronology and geography until 
they assume, or are condensed into, an ocular capa¬ 
bility of appliance. 

Isolated arithmetical latitudes and longitudes, 
however accurately learnt by heart, could never, 
without geographical mapping, have conveyed to 
the mind or embodied in memory the varying form 
of the earth; nor can isolated historical dates, 

b 2 


4 PROLUSION A L REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

without the adjunctive agency of chronological 
mapping, ever convey to the mind or embody in 
memory the varying progressional “form and pres¬ 
sure” of historical time. 

Slowly, and but very recently, have geographical 
maps been taken into popular use; hut not a 
mechanic in this country, is there now, who does not 
fully understand the difference between geographical 
reading with and without the accompaniment of 
geographical maps; the difference between merely 
having a letter-press gazetteer to refer to for the 
situation of isolated places, and having an embodied 
and generalised view of entire districts of place in 
geographical maps : and not long, I hope, it will 
be, before every one will become aware of the 
difference too between historical reading with and 
without chronological maps; of the difference be¬ 
tween having to apply for every isolated date to an 
historical or biographical dictionary or other his¬ 
torical letter-press work, and having the correlative 
relation of historical dates and events to each other 
embodied and generalized in consecutively mapped 
depictions of regions of historical and biographical 
time. 

Among the motives to the study of History, we 
may cursorily mention that exercising, as we do, 
either by our example or our immediate rule con¬ 
siderable influence upon the political destinies of 
mankind in every quarter of the globe, we are even 
nationally called upon to use more strenuous exer¬ 
tion than ever toward attaining a high degree of 


UNRECORDED TIME. 5 

BARBARISM. 

mental culture, and especially toward calling our¬ 
selves into historical reflection on the condition, 
habits, prejudices, and capabilities of that species 
over which we have acquired such extraordinary 
sway : a sway, indeed, so wonderfully varied and 
extended as was never before known on the earth ; 
for either in friendship or in war we are in constant 
communion or conflict with mankind in every divi¬ 
sion of the habitable- globe. And we urge a national 
motive, because we conceive that every increase 
of national knowledge , and especially of historical 
knowledge, may reasonably be hoped to be accom¬ 
panied with an increase of national dignity and 
national moderation ! As a motive of more private 
character to all classes of our great community—by 
no means, of course, excluding ladies, who, by- 
the-hye, singularly enough, are generally infinitely 
better versed in history than even their legislative 
husbands and brothers—we may mention, now that 
travelling has become so general and so widely ex¬ 
tended, conversation necessarily more frequently 
than formerly touches upon historical topics, and 
thus more than ever, in our day, the want of a com¬ 
petent knowledge of history must be found incon¬ 
venient. 

In this introductory section we shall, interspersed 
with general remarks for the student’s consideration, 
simply seek to feel our way through those dark regions 
of time which precede the era of written history, 
and further consider what, on arriving at the verges 
of written time, are likely to he the earliest impedi- 


6 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

ments to our progress that will require, preparatorily, 
to he pioneered out of the way. 

Ascending to the contemplation of man in his 
rudest stages of existence, in his earliest state of 
helpless, and, seemingly, hopeless barbarism, we 
propose not to limit ourselves to the bourn of his 
written recollections—which stands, with Moses, 
the earliest recorded historian, about 1470 before 
Christ, within 394j years of being exactly midway 
between the creation, 4004 before Christ, and the 
present 1853 after Christ*; but passing beyond 
even the period of his purely traditional memorials, 
remoter still, we shall seek to gather glimpses of 
what may be designated the analogous history of 
man, or of that portion of man’s history which can 
alone he studied by analogy. 

The natural history of man, or rather the history 
of man’s natural existence, seems to differ not 
materially from that of many inferior animals; his 
body, like theirs, is subject to accidents, to pain, to 
diseases, and death! Nor does man, in the vicissi¬ 
tudes and inequalities of fortune and condition, 
stand alone, as we shall see strikingly exemplified 
by merely casting our eyes upon those animals 
which are nearest at hand for observation. Instance 

* If we exclude retrospective history, 2534 years of the 
world will constitute the unrecorded, and 3323 years the 
historical ages of mankind ; if, therefore, w r e add but 394£ 
years to the 2534 unrecorded years, we make up 2928^ 
years, being exactly one-half of the 5857 years from the 
Creation, 4004 before to 1853 after Christ. 


UNRECORDED TIME. 7 

BARBARISM. 

but the dog and the horse. One dog we see 
pampered- with delicacies, amid daily caresses, on 
cushions of down; while another is as plentifully 
receiving kicks and cuffs and hard words wherever 
he goes in search of that chance food on which he 
is constrained to subsist. One horse, with a skin 
sleek and shining, we see prancing and curveting, 
carefully attended, sumptuously fed, endlessly 
curried , and, to all exterior appearance, enjoying a 
state of undisturbed bliss; while another , mourn¬ 
fully neglected, is doomed (perhaps, too, under a 
scanty supply of unwholesome food) to daily 
drudgery and stripes in an overladen waggon or cart; 
or, still worse, to an everlasting giddy and blinding 
round about and about in a mill. And of the 
changes or falls in what we may term animal 
fortunes, perhaps no illustration more feeling can be 
offered than that which is so eloquently depicted in 
the well-known series of prints styled the “ High 
Mettled Racer.” 

Again, inferior animals, individually and in socie¬ 
ties, effect works which justly excite our wonder 
and admiration : the spider in forming his web, the 
bird in building its nest, the beaver in erecting its 
dwelling, and the bee, in societies, perfect labours, 
which man, if he can imitate, decidedly can not 
surpass. 

But here the resemblance ends—the tale of the 
works of the spider, the bird, the beaver, and the 
bee, once told are told for ever. The inferior 
animals, having no deliberative functions, no choice 


8 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

of action, are directed by instinctive feeling to 
their course of life, and in their labours they are 
borne at once to perfection—one generation cannot 
improve upon the works of another. 

But man ! although he too has instincts, has 
faculties of a different order—faculties of such slow 
development, powers so deeply hidden, that, although 
he dwell upon the earth for thousands of years, the 
invisible mine and collective power of thought will 
still seem to be as inexhaustible as ever. 

Man is distinguished by a characteristic capa¬ 
bility of progressive improvement. All man’s in¬ 
stitutions, his discoveries and attainments have been 
more or less matured and improved by practical 
application—nay, ages have passed away before the 
value even of many of these have become fully 
understood. And we may decidedly assert, as most 
immediately connected with our present theme, that 
all which man knows of the degree of happiness, 
either individual, or more particularly social and 
political , to which his nature is capable of attain¬ 
ing, is the result of experiment no less than of close 
observation. 

All human improvements may then be said to 
be mainly dependent upon experience , and History 
is, or ought to be, the faithful record of experience. 
If then we value present improvement, we must 
acknowledge how vast the importance has been to 
us that past generations have preserved and have 
transmitted for our instruction the records of their 
experience; and in proportion to the value which 



UNRECORDED TIME. 9 

BARBARISM. 

attaches to their having transmitted us such records, 
will be the importance of our consulting such 
records; or, in other words, of attentively pursuing 
that branch of study which it is the object of our 
present labour to develope and to recommend. 

And History, which is naturally the professional 
and indispensable study of the statesman and legis¬ 
lator, and of all who have influence upon the enact¬ 
ment of laws, is scarcely less imperatively demanded 
in every other class of educated society. It is equally 
required in the gentleman and the (transmarine) 
traveller; and, above all, History and Heroism 
being so intimately united, it is required in the 
high-minded warrior. 

“ To he ignorant of the past,” saith Cicero, “is to 
dwell in perpetual infancy! What is the fleeting 
existence of man if it combine not the memory of 
the past , with the perception of the present ? ” 

But before mankind attain to a competency for 
writing History, or of transmitting, even in the 
rudest form, any regularly-connected record of the 
transactions of their day, or of the events which 
befall them, millenniums may he literally said to 
pass away. To substantiate this assertion we need 
not resort to Hindoo, to Chinese, or to Japanese 
chronology, nor yet to Buffon’s “ Ages of the 
World,” nor, indeed, to any other computation 
wearing an appearance of extravagance; but sim¬ 
ply take the lowest of the three different compu¬ 
tations that have been drawn from the Hebrew 

b 3 


10 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

writings, as the era of the creation, namely, the 
year 4004 before Christ. 

[The three computations of which we are speaking 
are these, namely— 

1st. That text or manuscript of the Old Testament, 
termed the Hebrew Text, deemed alone to be the genuine 
text by those among the Jews whom we may, in modern 
ecclesiastical language, denominate the Roman Catholic 
Hebrews, gives, as already stated, the year * 4004 as 
the era of creation; 

2nd. That text which is declared to be the genuine 
by the Samaritans, or Protestant Hebrews, gives the 
year 4700; 

3rd. And that, Greek translation of the Old Testa¬ 
ment, generally known by the name of the Septuagint, 
gives the year 5872 before Christ as the era of 
creation. 

The three several computations then are, 4004, 4700, 
and 5872, making a difference between the first and the 
last of no less than 1868 years.] 

In America, that prodigious region, touching one 
Pole and projecting nearer than any other oil the 
globe toward the other Pole, when discovered by 
Columbus, in 1492 after Christ, or, according to the 
Hebrew text, about five millenniums and a half after 

the creation of the world, mankind (although they 

• 

* This is the date given by Archbishop Usher. The 
great chronologer Petavius, so highly eulogized by Dean 
Prideaux, author of the connection of the Old and New 
Testament, gives 3984. 


TJJSTEECORDED TIME. 11 

BARBARISM. 

were, indeed, on the high road to it, having attained 
to picture-writing in Mexico) had not arrived at 
letter-writing, and were therefore, of course, yet very 
far removed from the capability of keeping regular 
historical records. And, to return to our more 
domestic regions of the old world: the first his¬ 
torian of whom we have, there, any authentic notice 
is Moses , who flourished about 1470 before Christ; 
if, then, we deduct 1470 from 4004 we shall per¬ 
ceive that at least 2534 years had fled before any¬ 
thing in the shape of written history was known on 
the earth, and much later before it was known on 
that European earth, which now, as a Koli-i-nur of 
intellectual light, irradiates the globe. 

And Moses, although he does, in his introduction 
to the History of Abraham and Abraham’s Descen¬ 
dants, take a retrospective glance at the earliest 
ages of mankind, he passes it over with such a rapid 
hand that we cannot possibly gather from him the 
shadow even of a connected historical view of 
man’s gradual emergement out of that state of 
barbarous wretchedness into which his offence in 
Eden had cast him. 

We may, therefore, be said to have a blank of 
momentous extent before we arrive at the columns 
of written History: and the student, as he stands 
on the verge of this vast historical solitude, must 
determine either to bolt himself over it, by a sort 
of harlequin stride with his eyes shut, and seat 
himself down, without any preparatory reflection, 
into the midst of all the difficulties, all the forgeries, 


12 


PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 


fabrications, and falsifications attendant upon what 
we may designate the numismatical and diploma- 
tical period of man’s history, or that period from 
the commencement of which we are habituated to 
rely, almost exclusively, for the history of mankind 
upon engraved, stamped, or written documents. 
He must, I say, either encage the flight of examin¬ 
ing thought, and habitually tether down his mind, 
for historical examples and illustration, to the 
narrow confines of written records—to the secular 
limits scratched out by Herodotus’s pen—or, he 
must pursue the sole other course that lies open to 
him. If, namely, he should think that there is 
something highly unphilosophical in taking a flight 
blindfold over a territory in time expanding itself 
through thousands of years; if he be highly averse 
to leaving behind him so vast a region wholly un¬ 
explored, he will try, at all hazards, though unpro¬ 
vided with either compass or chart for his regular 
historical guidance, to gain at least a glimpse at its 
general features, and he will thus naturally be led 
to study the earliest periods of the history of man¬ 
kind by analogy —a method which, by the way, is 
perhaps the least fallacious of any that can be em¬ 
ployed in gathering especially early historical 
knowledge. For into the earliest written records 
of secular history, the vanity, the ignorance, the 
credulity, prejudice, or self-interest of man will in¬ 
fallibly introduce much erroneous matter: but 
where, from the want of written records, we are 
compelled to resort to living history, to read man 


UNRECORDED TIME. 13 

BARBARISM. 

himself—it is our own fault if we do not read him 
aright; for here is nothing which interposes be¬ 
tween us and truth ; here is nothing to darken or 
to cloud our historical vision. 

As this latter mode of commencing historical 
study is decidedly that which, to a certain extent, I 
would recommend, I must beg, although with all 
possible brevity, to offer some further remarks ex¬ 
planatory at once of my reasons for preferring this 
mode, of the interest which attaches to it, and the 
means which we have for carrying it into effect. 
In civilized life we are so intergrown and interwoven 
with endless conveniences and comforts — con¬ 
veniences and comforts which identify themselves 
so strongly with our earliest emanation of thought, 
and appear so completely to belong to our nature, 
that we may safely say that many thousand indi¬ 
viduals come into mature life and pass out of it with¬ 
out once hitting upon the idea that there ever could 
be a general state of society materially differing 
from that with which they are themselves sur¬ 
rounded. Whatever they want they send out for, 
or they order to be sent in. If they want a house 
or w r ant fields, they go and they hire or they buy 
them. If they fall ill they send for a medical 
adviser, if they want to make a will they send for a 
legal adviser: and, in short, they know of no 
bounds to the commanding of other men’s services, 
in any line, excepting .... the bounds prescribed 
in not having the means to pay for such services; 
nor does it occur to them that there ever was a 


14 PROLTJSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

period of any other bounds to the procuring of the 
conveniences and comforts of human existence. 

Staggering, indeed, it might still be to the belief 
of many a comfortable citizen to propound to him 
periods in which there was— 

Nor pill-taking, 

Nor will-making. 

Times of little surgery, less physic, and, throughout 
this land, no statute law ! Especially now that w r e 
are so full gorged with law as to be positively 
apoplectical. The average number of our new laws 
(independently of the anterior upheaped piles of the 
old) made in the first quarter of the present cen¬ 
tury, presents us with the overwhelming picture of 
the numerical rate at which we are going on in law¬ 
making and law-cobbling. 

Staggering, indeed, it might well be, I say, to 
the credence of many a wealthy citizen to tell him 
of regions of time in which there was no statute 
law; if he were conversant with the fact, that, 
through the indefatigable zeal and kindness of our 
legislative bodies, we have been provided, within the 
first quarter of the present century, i. e. from 
1st January, 1801, to 31st December, 1825, with 
more than 9125 new Acts of Parliament! each con¬ 
taining diverse sections or items of law, thus yield¬ 
ing us one Act of Parliament for our reading for 
each day in the year for 25 years together , and a 
few extra ones for perusal on saint days and Sun¬ 
days. 


UNRECORDED TIME. 15 

BARBARISM. 

And this great fact, while it might well stagger 
some, might lead others into reflection and inquiry 
as to which of the two is the greater evil, namely, to 
be without law altogether, or to be so redundantly 
supplied with it that no person can profitably read, 
and much less understand, all the laws now in force 
within this realm. There is much matter of chance 
in both cases; and if the weight of the club pre¬ 
vails in one case, the weight of the purse will as 
often, in our present confused state of law, be 
found to prevail in the other. 

The wisdom of law-making with us would now 
be to abstain from all law-making until the existing 
enactments had been reduced into some readable 
and comprehensible form and compass. But what 
a Luther or a Hercules in law it would require to 
pull down and scatter to the winds such moun¬ 
tainous masses of ill-digested legislation, or to 
rumble them into any sort of available order ! The 
legislative expense to the country of the present 
system of law-multiplying is as incalculable as it is 
incredible. 

We may take, as an example, railway legislation. 
Instead of one general bill, in which the whole prin¬ 
ciple of railway law might be embodied, every new 
company, if but for one-half mile of railway mak¬ 
ing, must have an entirely separate Act of Parlia¬ 
ment, and have to pay all the costs thereunto 
belonging. 

Considerations of this, as well as of much graver, 
character, will, in themselves, I think partly deter- 


16 PROLE SIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

mine us where to break ground m historical study 
(if instruction be our object) ; independently of 
the extreme interest which attaches to beholding 
man—looking down upon him, as it were, from a 
place of concealment, while making his infantile 
efforts to conquer his own ignorance and shake off 
his own barbarity—and to watch him onwards, at 
every stage, as he toils against and overcomes 
difficulties ; gradually fighting and working his way 
upward toward knowledge and civility with ?io other 
auxiliaries than the inherent faculties with which 
the Almighty has been pleased to gift him ; having 
no light from history, no guidance, nor consolation, 
as yet, from true religion; surrounded with real 
hindrances and perils, and having, besides, to buffet 
with the imaginary terrors and obstacles which 
superstition conjures up around him. To see him, 
I say, not sinking down under all this with a 
broken spirit, but still going on and going on 
(though retarded, though driven back again and 
again), till at last we behold him lifted up, by his 
manly perseverance and heart, to a firm footing on 
the rampart of civility, is a glorious spectacle— 
a spectacle which claims our warmest interest and 
most fixed regard: at the same time that it at once 
stamps a knowledge of the almost immeasurable 
distance that lies between savage and civilised ex¬ 
istence, and of the immense debt which we owe to 
the activity and patience, the ingenuity and per¬ 
severance of man for the endless conveniences, and 
now almost indispensable comforts which daily wait 


UNRECORDED TIME. 17 

BARBARISM. 

upon us all. Upon all, I say, because our very 
cottagers in England, at this day, would deem it 
wretchedness to he deprived of many articles which 
the arts of life can furnish even to them, hut which 
no emperor, in savage or semi-barbarian life, though 
he might sway millions of mankind, could ever 
have commanded. 

But again comes the question, How are we to 
study all this ? and I again answer, solely by ana¬ 
logy. For of course we can no more expect man, 
in the infancy of society, to have kept a rational 
record of his own barbarity, than we can expect from 
a child a rational account of its own first years of 
existence. But the child grown to maturity will, on 
beholding other infants, readily learn, by analogy, 
what must have been its own earliest state of being. 
And in like manner the student of History may, by 
looking around him in the world, by not confining 
his vision to one spot, gain a pretty accurate idea 
of what man must have been in his first periods of 
barb&rous helplessness. For navigators and travel¬ 
lers have opened to us such ample fields for the 
study of this first branch of man’s history, that we 
shall find no difficulty in forming for ourselves’ a 
graduated scale of man’s social existence, from zero 
up to boiling heat. Columbus alone has opened to 
us a whole hemisphere of gradations in savage life, 
carrying us downwards to the most humiliating 
points of human existence, and showing us man¬ 
kind, even in considerable bodies, straying about 
without the slightest covering, like herds of wild 


18 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

cattle, and browsing, if we may so call it, upon raw 
vegetable productions of spontaneous growth. While 
' on the other hand, his cotemporary Vasco has con¬ 
ducted us to a social atmosphere of the highest cul¬ 
ture that human nature, unassisted by any extra¬ 
neous instruction whatever, and without even the 
feeblest ray of true religion, was ever dreamt to have 
the power of attaining to. 

Indeed, the student of History in our day pos¬ 
sesses this extraordinary advantage that there is no 
state of society whatever, either among those re¬ 
corded in the pages of time, or those comprised in 
the ultra-savage stages, which we cannot, by turning 
to one region of the earth or another, corroborate 
or illustrate upon a larger or smaller scale, by living 
examples. 

We all know (for I believe there are few of us 
who have not, since the peace of 1815, on one 
errand or other crossed to a foreign shore)—we all 
of us I say know that, howsoever much we may 
have read, or howsoever minutely been verbally in¬ 
formed, of a foreign country or people, how very 
differently that country or people will present itself to 
our mind from the first moment that we have set foot 
in the midst of it, or seen it in real life ; and hence 
we can feel and fully understand the immense advan¬ 
tage towards thoroughly unfolding to ourselves, to¬ 
wards carrying ourselves into the very midst as it 
were of the manners and feelings of any past stage 
of social existence in Europe, or elsewhere; of not 
only reading of, but also attentively considering the 


UNRECORDED TIME. 

BARBARISM. 


19 


nearest living analogy with which we can compare 
it. Thus, towards Poland we may look for a toler¬ 
ably faithful living picture of the filth, sloth, and 
oppressive tyranny of the feudal ages of Europe; 
and again, to the modern Turks we may look if we 
wish to view many strongly resemblant features to 
the character of the ancient Roman rule. For not 
alone in the fabulous tradition, by each of those na¬ 
tions, of their earliest chieftain, or founder, having 
been suckled by a she- wolf, did the shepherds of 
Latium, and the shepherds of Scythia, without any 
mutual intercourse, offer a striking point of re¬ 
semblance; hut for many generations (aye, during 
at least the five hundred and fifty years from the 
foundation of Rome, which passed away before a 
taste for literature was first introduced, or brought 
into fashion by the Scipios) the Turks and the Ro¬ 
mans will appear in personal character to he pre¬ 
cisely the same description of rude and fortunate 
military adventurers. Each nation subsisting upon 
military spoil, each proudly holding itself aloof 
from, and refusing in manners or in blood to amal¬ 
gamate with the conquered, each cherishing an over¬ 
hearing military ferocity as the haut ton of their 
nation, and each (generally speaking) esteeming 
martial prowess to he the sole estimable or essential 
qualification. And in imperial rule, the Roman and 
the Osman have had alike their formidable and tur¬ 
bulent Praetorians and Janizaries, and alike their ra¬ 
pacious and distant governors , who, when they arose 
to such wealth or influence as to excite the jealousy 


20 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

or fear of the head of the State, would on the one 
hand often quietly submit to the individual and well- 
known messenger of disgrace or death, or, on the 
other hand, openly erect the standard of revolt. 

But to return to the consideration of the periods 
of unwritten History. On comparing the progress 
of inventions in one savage region and another, we 
shall find that implements of offence and defence 
are among the very first efforts at invention. The 
club, the spear, and even the sling and the buckler, 
are soon found out; and, what is somewhat remark¬ 
able, hardly in any region of the globe shall we find 
savage man without the bow and arrow. 

Calculated to excite our wonder is the very early 
period at which man, in many instances, appears to 
acquire a daring mastery over that element which 
one would suppose he would be tardy and fearful in 
approaching; the savage is seldom discovered before 
he has contrived to build some sort of canoe, and 
not unfrequently he already is found seated in a 
dauntless attitude beneath his leaf-formed or grass- 
woven sail. Very few persons would, I believe, in 
our days choose to hazard themselves in making 
excursions backwards and forwards, between this 
island and the Irish shores, in that sort of portman¬ 
teau bark, composed of wickerwork and hides, which 
was so fearlessly used by the Aborigines of these 
isles. 

Another very striking characteristic is that which 
may be termed the corporeal heroism of savages, 
that unflinching firmness, that heroic endurance, 


UNRECORDED TIME. 21 

BARBARISM. 

nay, almost superhuman sporting, amid the inflic¬ 
tion of the most frightful and long-continued bodily 
tortures that human ingenuity can conjure up. And 
more particularly is this striking as applied to the 
Aboriginal Americans, a large proportion of whom 
being persons of fragile frame and feeble constitu¬ 
tion, would have seemed more likely to scream out 
under the stripe of a straw, than to exhibit under 
the torments of their enemies such immoveably 
heroic fortitude as might incline a spectator to be¬ 
lieve that, not of flesh and fibres and sensitive 
nerves, but of malleable iron must be their frame. 
A fact which, by-the-bye, tends greatly to cast into 
the shade those individual instances of bodily he¬ 
roism in early Greek and Eoman story, which we have 
accustomed ourselves to regard as so unparalleled, 
whereas by turning to present Africa, or America, 
or indeed to any quarter of the globe in ultra periods 
of barbarism, we should have no difficulty in col¬ 
lecting parallels by the gross if we needed them. 
The death-song of Hegner Lodbrok is breathed in 
exactly the same spirit of taunting, irritating, and 
contemptuous defiance and foreboding vengeance, 
by the Danish warrior in the tenth century, as is 
still witnessed in the American warrior of the nine¬ 
teenth century. Showing that mankind (no matter 
under what name or in what region) will, while in 
the same stage of social existence, act in identi¬ 
cally the same manner everywhere. 

This corporeal heroism may assist in explaining 
why the savage is seen almost invariably yielding to 


22 


PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 


mental tyranny earlier than to bodily domination. 
For, while in a savage state, man will surrender his 
mind to enslavement long before he will habituate 
himself to acknowledge any bodily coercion, hut 
when he becomes a civilized being his case is exactly 
reversed: his body is then the first to surrender; 
his body may he readily coerced, while his mind 
will spurn, with indignation, at any offered restraint. 
Nor can we reprove man for thus almost constantly 
offering checks to power either with body or with 
mind, for were he patiently to submit with both, 
there are no depths too humiliating, there is no 
slavery too cruel into which superstition, and des¬ 
potism have not shown themselves ready to trample 
him. 

Extremely interesting, as connected with the 
earliest emanations of literature, are the various 
forms, characters, and materials that have first been 
employed in writing. Some, for example, having 
used stones, others the skins or the bones of ani¬ 
mals, the bark of trees, leaves, wax tables, &c. 
Some have written vertically , i. e. single word be¬ 
neath word downwards, to an indefinite length, while 
others have carried their writing horizontally on¬ 
ward upon a single line, also to an indefinite length. 
Two extreme systems which mankind in general 
have blended into a medium method of writing both 
horizontally and vertically. The Western nations, 
however, differing from the Eastern in this respect, 
that while we write from the left to the right, the 
Easterns commonly write from the right hand to- 


UNRECORDED TIME. 23 

BARBARISM. 

wards the left. The India House library possesses 
a rich store of Tal Patras (or manuscripts on palm 
leaves), Curruttnms, and other specimens of the early 
or primitive modes and materials for registering 
thought in India well worthy the attention of all 
who have an opportunity of inspecting them. 

Again, how numerously varied must have been 
in themselves the signs for thought, or the symbols 
of sounds, which mankind have attempted before they 
had thoroughly learned to write, i. e. what an in¬ 
finite variety of attempts there must have been made, 
and methods adopted, from the commencement of 
abridged picture-writing, or what we may term idea- 
writing, onwards through word- writing, or the ex¬ 
pression of an entire word to syllabic writing, until 
at last the human mind, in the person of Cadmus, 
the Phoenician, arrives at the era of transpo sable 
alphabetic LETTER-writing, or that era from which 
mankind have attained to (and afterwards gradually 
improved upon, the sixteen alphabetic characters in¬ 
troduced by Cadmus), the rudimental capability of 
manoeuvring, as in Europe, four and twenty letters, 
and ten ( Arabic ) arithmetical figures or cyphers*, 
into such an infinitude of transpositions as can 
transmit to distant regions or generations every 
variety of human thought, and express every pro¬ 
duction and application of numerical power. 

Again the earliest national , as well as afterwards 
private acquisition of property, in land, presents 

* In use among the Arabs about 700 after Christ, but not 
introduced into England until the eleventh century. 


24 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

matter for much interesting reflection; for while 
some of the wandering hordes continue wholly no¬ 
madic, others we shall see becoming half settled, as 
it were; and while some claim the earth they occupy 
for the time being, hut on quitting it abandon all 
idea of further property in it; others again will re¬ 
claim (as in India) the village or tent-ground they 
have formerly occupied; on this score, perhaps, that 
they had sown their com before they, as hunters or 
warriors, had undertaken an expedition elsewhere; 
and on their return hold that they have a right to the 
produce to be found on the spot. Further, in Ame¬ 
rica; in New Holland, or Australasia, how curious 
it is to observe what immense tracts of country 
(beneath the surface of which he fields of gold!) 
there are, even so late as our own times, in which no 
one can properly he said to have any claim of pro¬ 
perty. This inquiry is perhaps rendered the more 
interesting since the French revolution has been the 
means of calling up many speculations as to the 
validity of the tenure in many cases of private 
landed property; but we believe that there are few 
private individuals who cannot exhibit a much 
better title to the property they possess than almost 
any nation. For there is every reason to suppose 
that there is no existing sovereign State, especially 
in Europe, that did not originally, and within easily 
recollected time, become possessed of its national 
domains through blood and violence. How other¬ 
wise, to speak of our own island, could that, especi¬ 
ally Saxon and Norman ancestry, from which so 


UNRECORDED TIME. 25 

BARBARISM. 

very large a majority of us have sprung; how 
otherwise than by blood and violence could these 
have become possessed of national territory in Bri¬ 
tain ? If, then, I say, the advocates of uprooting 
revolution would attaint, or wrest away the posses¬ 
sions of individual holders, they must also, in com¬ 
mon reason, as a matter of justice, go further hack, 
and restore to the earliest known possessors the pro¬ 
perty of nations. They must call hack from Armo¬ 
rica and down from the Welch hills the ancient 
Britons, to take quiet possession of all the flourish¬ 
ing counties of England now in the hands, and the 
cultivation, of the descendants of the Saxons and 
Normans, or they must call hack the old Homan 
rulers of the isle. And then the Ancient Britons 
would have to call hack again those weaker and 
earlier aboriginal tribes whom they had themselves 
either extirpated, enslaved, or territorially dispos¬ 
sessed. 

In carefully attending to, and comparing, the im¬ 
positions and superstitions which the savage has 
often but too readily allowed to be inflicted upon 
him, under the name of religion, we shall have oc¬ 
casion to observe how completely and literally he 
has imaged the Almighty to he of his own features 
and complexion, whether Hottentot, Grecian, or 
American ; and how liberally too he has ascribed to 
the Almighty all his own passions, wants, and fail¬ 
ings, and identified his Creator with his own appe¬ 
tites, offering sacrifices of human flesh as long as 
he, being yet a cannibal, regards this non -transub- 


26 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

stantion food as the most delicate that he can offer. 
And when he happily leaves off this diet, we shall 
still see him invariably offering such animals, or 
other articles of food, as are to his own palate the 
most savoury or most agreeable. 

Again, we shall see how the savage hastens to 
offer fat sacrifice when he hears the dread rumbling 
in the sky, which he thinks is the voice of the Deity 
reproaching him, and complaining of want of food, 
well knowing that nothing so soon raises uneasy 
and angry sensations in himself as a hungering 
after food. And next to the Deity, whose stomach 
he fancies he thus appeases, he early strives, by the 
same mode of fat offerings,’ to satisfy him whom he 
holds to he the nearest ally of the Deity, viz. the 
Pagan priest, whose rumblings and grumblings, 
when there is any want of food, are scarcely less 
audible than the thundering voice of the Deity 
himself. 

But I believe it to be wholly unnecessary to dwell 
longer upon the endeavour to show that there is 
considerable interest attaching to the study of man • 
through all his several stages of savage and semi¬ 
social existence; and that commensurate to the in¬ 
terest of the subject is the scope which we have for 
pursuing it. For although abstract reason would 
tell us that mankind having all attained to such a 
degree of social culture as to be able to construct 
the tower of Babel, that being all apparently upon 
one footing of knowledge, and thus all starting fair 
at the dispersion; they would, whithersoever they 


UNRECORDED TIME. 27 

BARBARISM. 

wandered, have each carried with them, and im¬ 
proved upon, the degree of social attainment which 
each had already arrived at; and consequently left 
us for ever in the dark as to the proceedings of our 
species when first cast into barbarism. 

Abstract reason, I say, would tell us this, hut 
facts —the most undeniable facts —strike down our 
abstract reasoning, and practically tell us that some 
portions of mankind have retrograded as deeply 
into the torpor of barbarity, as others have shot up¬ 
ward into civility. The two poles are not wider 
asunder than an enlightened Englishman, or even a 
highly-polished Brahminical Indian, and the human 
beings discovered hut yesterday, as it were, by our 
hold Arctic navigators. Indeed, the difference is 
so prodigious, that one might almost seriously 
imagine the savages who approached Captain Boss 
with salutations of nose-pulling, who took his ves¬ 
sels for large birds and the sails for the wings of 
the birds, must (like the oysters we have heard of 
being boxed' up in marble beds for ages and still 
found alive) have verily been locked up in icebergs 
some thousands of years, until by some lucky cleft 
they had at length been let out. But then it imme¬ 
diately recurs to us that examples of such intense 
barbarity are not confined to iceberg regions 
alone, hut may still daily be witnessed in the most 
genial climes of the earth, as in different parts of 
America, in New Holland, and variously elsewhere. 

As a counterpart to Arctic barbarism, we may 
recall to memory that the natives of the Marian 

c 2 


28 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

Islands, or Ladrones, northward of the Carolinas, 
and eastward of the Philippines, when discovered 
by Magellan, 1521, were so totally unacquainted 
with fire , that they believed the flame to he a living 
animal which fed upon wood, and from which they 
stood aloof, in the utmost terror, particularly after 
some of them, who had incautiously approached it 
too closely, had been bitterly as they called it, by the 
fire-animal. 

How to account for this our reason may he 
puzzled, hut sufficient it is, for our present purpose, 
to know th Q facty that there exist, at this moment, 
on the earth, two extreme, and, one might almost 
think, nearly impassable bourns of human barba¬ 
rity and human culture; and, that between these 
extreme points we shall find every intermediate gra¬ 
dational link. And in witnessing this fact, strange 
as it may strike us to be at first sight, we shall ac¬ 
knowledge that there is, in reality, in it nothing more 
strange than to witness the immense inequalities in 
the attainment of knowledge, which, within the 
narrow limits of our own isle, daily meet our sight. 
Some favoured, diversely, by fostering causes, we be¬ 
hold (as at the one extreme) possessing themselves 
of boundless knowledge, or rising to the most ele¬ 
vated pedestals of literary fame, while others (as at 
the other extreme) are condemned, some by natural 
sloth, but more by hard necessity, for ever, to the 
most torpid depths of ignorance. 

There is one more feature connected with this 
subject which seems worthy of remark, viz. that. 


UNRECORDED TIME. 29 

BARBARISM. 

although it is extremely easy to lift an individual 
of barbarous parentage at once (t\ e. in his own 
single generation) into the highest culture, by giving 
him the necessary advantages from early youth; 
history does not, as far at least as my reading goes, 
furnish us with any example of an entire nation 
having been, through extraneous aid, lifted into 
civilization. Indeed, there is every reason to believe, 
that were any considerable body of Ravages at this 
moment to be transplanted into the heart of a highly- 
civilized State, many generations might pass away 
before they found themselves even comfortable in the 
presence of, and much less upon a par with, their 
surrounding neighbours. 

If, then, in the midst of civility, an entire nation 
would he so slow to learn, how much more tardy 
must be the progress of instruction at a distance, 
and where there can comparatively he hut so few 
examples to stimulate to improvement; and thus we 
are inclined to believe that there never will reign an 
equality of civilization throughout the world. Nay, 
thousands of years may perhaps yet pass away (if 
any of the Aborigines should thus long survive) be¬ 
fore even those tribes of the Aborigines of America 
who border closest upon the Anglo-Americans, and 
have thus daily under view incitements to improve¬ 
ment, can rank themselves in arts and knowledge as 
the equals of the Anglo-Americans. 

On an attentive perusal and consideration of all 
the information that has been given of savage life. 


30 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

I believe that the student may satisfy himself of the 
following general results, namely:— 

That man commences his career of action as a 
hunter, he takes the field as a warrior against all 
the beasts of the field. He next takes the field, 
more like a hunter than a warrior, against his own 
species, whom he soon learns to dread, to hate, and 
to hunt down, as among the worst of his enemies. 

These two primary avocations occupy him long; 
and by the time that he presents himself, thirdly , as 
a herdsman, we may assume that he has already 
gained some useful knowledge; he has begun to 
reflect, for he has found out that the inferior animals 
may be rendered as valuable to him when treated as 
friends, as when pursued as enemies; and that as 
domestic auxiliaries they are calculated to render 
him services of the highest importance. And we 
shall now, too, behold him, instead of carrying on 
individual warfare as before, conducting in petty 
parties, hordes, or clans, the predatory prize-cattle- 
making excursions in which, in addition to his 
herdsmanship, he is sure to employ himself. 

When , fourthly, and lastly, we observe the migra¬ 
tory herdsman learning to till the ground—finding- 
out that he can increase the earth’s produce (which, 
by the way, would require no small effort of his 
reflection and observation)—we shall see him at 
first partially settled, which will naturally lead to 
his becoming wholly stationary, as a Husband¬ 
man ! And from this fourth period of change. 


UNRECORDED TIME. 31 

BARBARISM. 

we may date the era of his commencing a career 
of steady advancement toward civility; and thus 
husbandry, to which many are accustomed to at¬ 
tach an exclusive idea of rudeness, we behold to he 
the basis of all mans inventions and improvement 
in the arts of life, and of all man’s advancement in 
the career of mental culture. 

Whether man be naturally of migratory or of 
stationary disposition may, perhaps, be difficult satis¬ 
factorily to determine; for, in some cases, he seems 
as uncontrollably averse to any infringement on his 
locomotive habits, as, in other cases, it seems death 
to him to he removed from the chosen (though, 
perhaps, sterile) haunts of his tribe or ancestry. 
But of this fact we may, I think, readily convince 
ourselves, viz. that when man’s body first becomes 
properly stationary, does his mind first appear to he 
visibly moving onward in improvement. The ever- 
wandering Tartarian tribes, although of such known 
vast antiquity, appear, in their successive genera¬ 
tions, not to have made any material advances in 
the arts of life. Their bodies wander, but their 
minds, as to improvement, appear to he at rest. 
And it is not until man, as a husbandman and (by 
natural progression) as a citizen, has largely multi¬ 
plied, that the prodigious difference between man in 
a savage, and man in a civilized state, fully hursts 
upon our view. For then we first forcibly read how 
frail and feeble man is as an individual, and how 
gigantic are the powers which he wields when his 
mental energies are at once awakened and concen- 


32 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

tred in a state of civilized social union. Then 
we first perceive (especially in free communities) 
that, as society keeps swelling in numbers, strength 
of intellect seems also to be in a state of perpetual 
growth; and that, building himself upon the ex¬ 
perience of others, man, at every new invention 
which he hits upon, seems but to be striking out so 
many fresh sparks to ignite other and still more 
important discoveries. In fine, it is then that we 
first become aware that the mind of man can leave 
memorials (pyramids of the mind) on the earth, 
surpassing in durability, as much as they excel in 
glory, the pyramids which his grosser manual 
powers have reared. 

And, again, it is only in a state of extended 
social union that all the diversities of temper and 
disposition among mankind become beneficially 
blended. Just as drugs of opposite tendency and 
quality will, when intermixed, correct or neutralize 
each other; and that which in itself would be de¬ 
structive or baneful, will thus become wholesome, 
or, in many cases, highly salutary. 

To return to our subject. As a husbandman, 
man, we may suppose, turns up the earth at first 
with the very rudest wooden implement, and by 
the very slowest manual process. He next, perhaps, 
learns with less bodily fatigue to scratch up the 
soil with a sort of harrow, rather than a plough, 
made of hardened wood or the horns of cattle. 
By these, and the like uncouth and inadequate 
means, man helps himself onward, until having, at 


UNRECORDED TIME. 33 

BARBARISM. 

last, propitiously discovered the metals , previously 
hidden by the earth’s surface from his sight, and 
learnt ever so rudely to apply them to the purposes 
of life, he gains at once centuries of advancement; 
for then properly may he said his real empire over 
the beasts of the forest to be fully established; 
and then first may be said the soil of the earth to 
be properly brought into subjection to the use of 
man. 

Iron he is, of course, long before he uses; be¬ 
cause wholly unacquainted with the processes 
almost always necessary (for it very rarely indeed 
is found in a pure state) to convert it to his use. 
We, therefore, first find him applying to the pur¬ 
poses of life, silver, gold, and, above all, copper— 
all these coming to his hand in a more ready state 
for use than iron. Copper , indeed, in the higher 
periods of antiquity, appears to have been in the 
same general use that iron is in our day. In some 
Egyptian mines, which, after having fallen in and 
long been disused, were in later times re-opened, 
every implement discovered was of copper. In 
some districts too of Siberia , where traces of 
ancient mining have been discovered, all the tools 
and the manufactured implements (as knives, dag¬ 
gers, and arrow-points) were found to be of copper. 
On the discovery of America, the metallic weapons 
and utensils of the Aborigines were mostly of cop¬ 
per ; although iron in a tolerably pure state was, in 
America, to be found very near the surface of the 
earth. And with the Japanese, at this day, almost 

c 3 


34 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

all the articles are of copper, which with us are of 
iron. But iron would naturally be long before 
brought into use, from the high temperature of 
heat required in the'working of it. 

In what manner the metals might first be dis¬ 
covered we may gather from the two following 
facts:— 

A native herdsman, in South America, about the 
year 1545, while scrambling after a stray Lama (a 
goat of the camel species), tore up, among the steep 
rocks, a shrub which he had accidentally caught 
hold of for support, and thus, to his surprise, laid 
bare the first seen silver of the immeasurably rich 
Potosi mines. 

Again (to go further back), about the year 972, 
during the reign of Otto the First, a horse left 
fastened to a tree in a forest near Goslar, in Ger¬ 
many, had, before his master s return from pursuing 
the chase on foot, so impatiently pawed up the 
ground that he had uncovered a metallic substance 
which led to the discovery of those mines which 
have ever since been worked in the Bammel’s Berg, 
or the Mountain of Rammel —so called out of 
grateful memory to the horse, whose pet-name was 
Rammel. 

• In the tardy adaptation of metals as a repre¬ 
sentative of value for the convenience of traffic, and 
as least incommodious in bulk, copper would pro¬ 
bably be the earliest iu use; next silver, the French 
retaining to our time argent , or silver, as a general 
designation for money; and, in like manner, the 


UNRECORDED TIME. 35 

BARBARISM. 

Hebrews used a term equivalent to silverYm^ as 
the general name for money. The first rudely- 
attempted coins were of various form; round, 
square, or triangular; on which the worth was struck 
by a hammer, or roughly graven. And as cattle and 
sheep were primary articles of barter, the repre¬ 
sentation of an ox is found on the earliest Greek 
coins, and the coin itself was called an ox; and, in 
.France, we early find a gold penny bearing the 
stamp of a lamb, and the gold-slieep coin of larger 
and smaller size and value. In Persia it was that 
the usage was introduced of stamping the coin with 
a likeness of the ruling sovereign, in the reign of 
Darius I. Hystaspes, about 500 before Christ; 
and hence the Persian coins have been designated 
Daricks. Ducats derive their name from ducatus , 
dukedom, the Italian dukes having first coined 
them. 

Finally, the very simplest processes in the exist¬ 
ing arts of life, such as bread-making and beer¬ 
brewing, would, in their discovery, call for no ordi¬ 
nary degree of ingenuity and observation. 

The earliest mode of cake-baking was to place 
the bruised corn, moistened into a sort of dough, 
between two heated flat stones; but burnt and 
steeped corn would precede this rather advanced 
operation. 

The application of heat to the preparing of ani¬ 
mal food would be sufficiently various; at first the 
object would be to give merely that warmth to the 


36 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

animal which it had when first killed. One mode 
of recorded cookery is the roasting of wild boars 
by filling them with red-hot stones. And, in this 
manner, too, for the boiling of animal food and 
vegetables, hot water was procured in the hollows 
of rocks; these hollows being first filled with water, 
which was heated by means of large red-hot stones. 

But I have already, I fear, dwelt longer upon 
and gone more into detail in this division of my 
subject than may have been generally acceptable to 
my readers; but I have been anxious to press upon 
their attention a preparatory portion of historical 
study, which, though it is so generally either slightly 
regarded or wholly neglected, I hold to be of first- 
rate importance towards rightly understanding the 
history of man; and upon which, if we do not choose 
to model it into a systematic body of instruction, 
we ought at least to have our eyes attentively fixed 
in the reading of voyages and travels, amid un¬ 
civilized nations; for we ought at least to know 
and to recollect, that in contemplating the manners 
and habits of these, we are but reading the history 
of our own national progenitorship at an easily- 
defined distance of time. We ought to recollect 
that, in surveying the 'punctured, painted , or other¬ 
wise fancifully-ornamented islander of the Pacific 
of our day, we do but behold the compeer, to the 
very life, of the Britannic islander of past times. 
We do but behold, in manners and character, the 
living representation of the punctured and woad- 


UNRECORDED TIME. 37 

BARBARISM. 

stained human beings whom Julius Caesar, in 55 
before Christ, encountered upon our own Britannic 
shores 1908 years ago. 

When we behold man settled in husbandry, we 
must necessarily jyr^-suppose a union, by one means 
or other, of several tribes to have been already 
effected; for any one small tribe would he too much 
harassed and perilled by the soundings of the war- 
whoop, ever to think of sitting regularly down to a 
life of husbandry. A sort of social union must 
then have been formed, and in what way ? We shall 
assist ourselves in conceiving when we reflect that, 
an individual in savage life is sure to be guided by 
no other law than the weight of his own club—that 
he will as assuredly take away, if he can, from 
another human being whatever he covets, as one 
dog will (in defiance of all law and equity), if daring 
or powerful enough, snatch away from another 
growling animal an inviting beef-hone. 

And the savage tribe, or family, will, like the 
savage individual, be ruled by no law hut that of 
superiority of strength; and, in proportion to its 
strength, it will, either through pride, caprice, re¬ 
venge, or for the sake of plunder, assail, exter¬ 
minate, or render wholly subservient to its own 
purposes and will, any neighbouring tribe; or it 
will slay all the men of a stranger tribe, and adopt 
into its own body the women and children. 

A tribe thus successful on a few occasions in the 
beginning may easily, especially if it does not extir¬ 
pate, hut adopt as slaves or subjects, the males of 


38 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

the succumbing tribes, soon swell into such num¬ 
bers as to enable it to go onward to fresh victories, 
attacking and subduing in succession (like the Ho¬ 
mans) single tribe after tribe with a united and ever 
conglomerating strength, until, at last, a sufficient 
number of people are brought to acknowledge one 
sway, and to be called by one name, as to begin to 
assume something of the appearance of a State, or 
of what is generally known by the word nation. 

Among the earliest of the nations of whom we 
have any record are those eight which, in collateral 
columns, are presented to our view in the first sheet 
of the twenty-five royal folio Tables, which here¬ 
after we shall require to have constantly under our 
survey. And among the earliest national character¬ 
istics of that Table we shall behold the Assyrians 
as most widely expanding the wings of conquest; 
Egypt as most densely consolidated into the sem¬ 
blance of a civilized State; and the enterprizing 
commercial Phoenicians presenting themselves un¬ 
pretendingly and unobtrusively as nearly co-equal 
with the Egyptians in useful arts and knowledge, 
and supplying the Jews with architects to build 
their first temple. 

Moses, in the Hebrew language, gives us the 
earliest periods of Jewish history; and Herodotus, 
in the Greek, opens to our view the principal part of 
the historical matter relating to the other columns. 

Greek may thus be said to offer to us the earliest 
page of universal , secular or profane, history; that 
is, supposing the Hindus and other Eastern nations 


UNRECORDED TIME. 39 

BARBARISM. 

to be unable to substantiate tlieir claims to written 
historical memorials of higher antiquity (for which 
see the columns of Oriental History in Table 
XIV.). And Greek further possesses a peculiar 
claim to our attention as being the language in 
which the New Testament was earliest written: for 
though the Divine precepts were delivered in Syro- 
Chaldaic, a corrupt and mixed dialect of the He¬ 
brew, they, as well as the historical portions of 
Evangelical Writ, were earliest compiled in Greek. 

Between Herodotus and Moses, however, we must 
not fail to note this observable distinction, viz. that 
Moses writes the history of but one nation, while 
Herodotus treats historically of all nations; and it 
is thus that he acquires the title of the “ Father 
of Universal History.” 

I have already given a rough and rapid sketch of 
what I conceive to be primitively the general or 
common origin of nations or political unions. But 
nations are not (any more than individuals) always 
to be satisfied with a common origin: they therefore 
contrive to trump up the most fantastical theories 
about the wonders and prodigies that have attended 
them in their birth, or waited upon them in their 
infancy; such theories being designed, of course, 
to establish a claim to an origin so extraordinary 
and miraculous as shall be quite different from the 
vulgar or common way of coming into national 
existence, and thus raise them proportionably, in 
the eyes of the world, above their neighbours. 
But, unfortunately for them, it happens that so 


40 PROLUSION AL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

many nations have hit upon the same trick, and are 
so marvellously alike in the fictions which they 
obtrude, that, instead of trying to surpass each 
other, one would suppose that they had all jointly 
agreed to he of one story. Gods and goddesses 
coming down among them to lend them a hand; 
meetings of men with angels, and discussions as to 
how matters ought to proceed; giants and super¬ 
natural sovereigns, and heroes, and so on, are as 
thick and common (to seize the only adequate com¬ 
parison) as hops in Kent. So that, instead of there 
being anything to wonder at or to admire in them, 
they become quite a bore : the tale so often told 
becomes tedious and homely , and does away with 
even the shadow of a chance of establishing higher 
or lower grades of national origin. Nay, it really 
effectually chastises all further desire for Divine 
pedigree tracing, when we perceive that even the 
illiterate and barbarous Peruvian , though totally 
unacquainted with the tact of mankind in contriving 
such matters in this hemisphere, had boldly and 
poetically hit upon quite as Godolphic an ancestry 
for himself as the everlastingly-inventive Greek. 

And the Greek, we must acknowledge, with all 
his subtilty of mind, has been but a sorry contriver 
of his own fame. All his fictions and filigree works 
about his own origin, all his never-ending conjur- 
ings up of god-like ancestry, form but a very sandy 
ground-work for the masonry of glory. They do not 
answer his purpose half so well as if he had plainly 
and bluntly told us the downright truth at once. If 


UNRECORDED TIME. 4i 

BARBARISM. 

he had simply said, I know that one considerable 
body of my ancestors (viz. the Pelasgi), and, most 
probably, like the social parentage of all other 
nations, the whole of them were, so or so many 
years ago, nothing hut cannibals, nothing but 
ravenous man-eaters; and here am I a poet, a 
painter, an architect, and a philosopher! Why, 
there would have been built up in half a dozen 
words an imperishable rock for fame to stand upon 
for ever. Whereas, on the contrary, if the Greek 
fictions had all been true stories, they would at once 
have been death to his fame, and ought, therefore, 
to have been carefully kept out of sight. For, if 
he had really enjoyed those celestial communings, 
and joinings of his nature with the gods; if he 
really had enjoyed such supereminent advantages; 
had been at the parlour-hoarding-schools of the 
Upper Regions, and gods had been his instructors 
and playfellows; we should only have said, what a 
dunderhead he must have been not to have got 
faster on to the upper classes of science than he 
did—not to have attained to his meridian pitch of 
civility at least half a millennium or more before 
the age of Pericles. 

We may save ourselves much valuable time, 
much useless perplexity, if we learn betimes—in 
the very outset of our attention to history—that it 
will he wholly unavailing for us to allow ourselves 
to he worked into anxiety to find out satisfactorily 
every distinctive particular of the minute origin 
of a State. 


42 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

Every nation (as long as it has its own way) 
claims to have come from the clouds; and how¬ 
soever ready it may be to assist in clearing away 
the fogs and mists that hang around the origin of 
other States, it will, decidedly, as far as regards its 
own origin, do all in its power to baffle our seeing 
through the clouds from which it pretends to have 
itself descended. 

The Greeks and the Romans can reciprocally tell 
us what was the uncouth and bear-like origin of the 
other , but neither nation likes to help us to see 
clearly when its own origin is in question. 

The priest of the Nile and the priest of the 
Ganges will both swear that the source of their 
respective rivers is not on the earth, hut high up 
in the heavens; and yet each will perhaps openly 
mock at the credulity of the followers of the 
other. But they neither of them can now deceive 
us; for, thanks to commerce, to enterprise, to navi¬ 
gation, and science, geography tells us that all 
rivers spring from the earth, as plainly as history 
convinces us that the earth , too, was the womb of 
all mankind; that mankind have no where been 
shot down, like silver arrows, from heaven, wearing 
at once the highest possible exterior polish and an 
unimprovable intrinsic worth; but that all primitive 
nations must have toiled themselves up out of the 
clays of barbarity. 

We are all aware how very difficult, nay, how 
quite impossible, it sometimes is to determine satis¬ 
factorily to every one what is and what is not the 


UNRECORDED TIME. 43 

BARBARISM. 

very first starting point of a river; for a river 
never bursts upon us at once in magnificence from 
the bosom of the earth. On the contrary, its be¬ 
ginnings are generally so very inconsiderable and 
so variously branched, that many a little hair¬ 
breadth rill may seem to have quite as good a 
claim to be called the source as any of the others; 
for it is not until several of these little rills have, 
by some casualties in their course, flowed into one 
bed, that any appearance of a river (how great 
soever that river may afterwards become) can be 
traced. The precise and undeniable first source 
of the Nile or the Ganges, mighty rivers as they 
are, who shall to the satisfaction of all mankind 
definitively determine ? Nay, it is notorious that 
the exact source of the Danube even, which takes 
its rise in the heart of civilized and enlightened 
Europe, has afforded matter of warm dispute up to 
the other day; and if now apparently settled, it is 
more likely to have become so from the parties at 
last feeling the futility of all further argument, than 
from any proof having been established that one 
little spring has a positive preference over another 
little spring, in the same chain of mountains, to be 
called the source of the largest river in Europe. 

Equally difficult (and equally ^important) to 
determine are sometimes the first tribal springs of 
the greatest nations, which could not be sensible, in 
their small beginnings, that they were destined for 
such subsequent grandeur. 

I would say, then, to the student, waste not your 


4 


44 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

time in trampling again and again among the little 
rills which (to use a hunters phrase) have been so 
often foil’d by the foot of the o^r-curious and 
microscopic antiquarian; muddle not your head 
with scrupulously trying to find out (that which, if 
you do find it out, will profit you nothing) the very 
first little beginnings of even the greatest nations; 
nor muddle with your feet, ever more and more, by 
fruitlessly trampling, the very first little rills of even 
the mightiest waters. 

But be satisfied by tracing a river, or a national 
history, up to a point from which it may safely be 
said in round language to begin; that is, to a point 
where it first sensibly strikes the eye by opening 
itself authentically into importance. 

Be satisfied with reflecting (as already pointed 
out) that the general origin of nations, as well as of 
rivers, is very insignificant (hardly distinguishable 
on the nicest examination), and that in essentials 
they so nearly resemble each other, that if we gain 
a pretty accurate general idea of the origin of any 
one of them, we can never be very far misled as to 
the nature of the origin of all of them. 

Coming, then, to this general conclusion, the 
period embraced in the first Table of the royal folio 
series of chrono-historical charts already referred to, 
although occupyfhg no less than 1445 years, will 
not demand much of your attention. It may be 
called the Marvellous Magazine period of ancient 
history—the period of the surmises of general his¬ 
tory rather than of general history itself; for down 


UNRECORDED TIME. 45 

BARBARISM. 

to Cyrus’s day, at the bottom of that Table, we can 
hardly he said to have gained any firm historical 
footing, particularly as regards the time reckoning; 
the chronology of this period being mostly regu¬ 
lated by the dates which mankind have partially 
agreed among themselves to accept as coming 
nearest to the mark, or constituting the best general 
guess on the subject that can be framed. * 

And, indeed, throughout the whole of ancient , 
and even during many ages of the early part of 
modern history, we must not be startled if we here 
and there meet with a discrepancy of a few years; 
and that, too, among authors of equally high repute 
for careful research and antiquarian knowledge; for 
we must all recollect that, after the wise and learned 
men of so many generations had, as it were, been 
closely laying their heads together to render early 
chronology as little knotty as possible, down came 
Sir Isaac Newton among them, like a bowl among 
ninepins, telling them they need no longer keep 
gravely fixed to their seats, higgling and niggling 
about a few odds and ends of Olympiads and years; 
for they had one and all (great and small) missed 
the whole matter by some hundreds of years ! Here 
was, indeed , a squandering knock down all at once 
to the result of the united and sleepless ponderings 
of the gravest sagacity during ages upon ages. 
And what rational man would, after this, be either 
disquieted or startled by small discrepancies; and 
much less confine himself twenty or thirty years to 
his chamber (as some have almost literally done), 


46 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

trying most determinedly to reconcile those discre¬ 
pancies in the minute retrospective reckonings (or 
assumption of dates) of early time, which we may 
now boldly affirm to he irreconcilable ? 

To say nothing of the periods in which mankind 
kept no time reckonings at all (knowing no dis¬ 
tinction of days under proper names, no division 
into vfeeks, into months, or into years), we may 
readily form an idea of the difficulties which rigid 
chronologers have to contend with even after man¬ 
kind did begin to attempt time reckonings, when we 
reflect that they had still neither any one general 
point to measure from, nor yet any one general 
standard to measure by. And thus we may easily 
conceive what an infinite variety of modes they 
would adopt; among which we may mention, by 
way of example, that one nation would measure 
day and night by military watches (from which by 
the way probably originated the appellation of that 
invaluable little time measurer which we carry in 
our fobs or our waistcoat pockets), while others 
would simply designate the day as one undivided 
space between sunrise and sunset. And when, 
afterwards, the day began to he divided into hours, 
still no uniformity was observed in beginning the 
day. One made the day begin at sun-msE, others 
(like the Jews and Italians to the present day) at 
sun-SET; and again others (like ourselves, extra¬ 
ordinary as it may seem) would begin their day in 
the middle of the night; added to which there are 
regions in which there is during one-half of the 


UNRECORDED TIME. 47 

BARBARISM. 

year continuous light, in the other half continuous 
darkness, one long day and one long night making 
up their dismal year. Again, at the equator they 
have daily equal day and equal night, without varying 
above one hour all the year round. And if such he 
the varieties that would attach to the short space of 
a day, how much more importantly varied would he 
the reckonings by cycles, by generations, by months, 
and by years. At one period the Romans divided 
their year into ten months, and afterwards into 
twelve months. The Jews began their year in our 
September; the Athenians began theirs with the first 
new moon after the summer solstice; but still more 
calculated to confuse, and more odd to one’s or¬ 
dinary association of ideas than the discrepant 
beginnings of the year by contemporary and 
perhaps contiguous nations, is the circumstance 
that some nations were not contented with one 
beginning, but had two beginnings, and of course 
two endings to the same year. The Jews began 
their year for secular purposes at a period an¬ 
swering, as already stated, to our September; but 
for ecclesiastical purposes they did not begin their 
year until the month of April. Jn like manner, at 
Papal Rome, one beginning of the year is at the 
nativity, and another at the incarnation of Christ. 
Nay, we had ourselves in England, until 1752, two 
beginnings of the year, one in January, and the 
other on the 25th of March. And we have, too, 
very recently ( who would believe it ?) had the quaint 
ingenuity to devise, under the auspices of the Right 


48 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

Honourable John Cam Hobhouse, as Secretary-at- 
War, the creation of a new military year, from the 
1st of April to the 31st of March; thus appropri¬ 
ately beginning, what we may term our April Fool 
Year, on April Fool Day. So that New-Year s Day, 
in the War-office calendar, no longer falls on the 1st 
of January, but on the first of April; making New- 
Year’s Day and April Fool Day exactly one and 
the same thing. And thus all the battles fought 
in the Burmese war, for example, during the late 
months of January, February, and March, which 
common chronology would affix to the year 1853, 
War-office chronology registers as being in 1852. 

The vast advantage of this bright gem of official 
cleverness cannot be fully understood or gustated 
until all the other heads of official departments, 
and of incorporated public bodies, shall have fol¬ 
lowed the Bight Honourable Gentleman’s example, 
by each creating or establishing for themselves their 
own independent year. For when, in addition to the 
new Military year, we get the new Naval year, the 
new Colonial, the new Home-Office year, and the 
new Foreign-Office year, with the natural sequence 
of a new Post-Office year, a new Stamp-Office, Ex¬ 
cise, and Custom-House year; and, of course, a new 
Bank of England, a new East India-House, and a 
new Bailway year ; a new Apothecaries’-Hall year, 
with the innumerable suite of the Tailors’, the Saint 
Crispin’s, and other separate Trades’ new years, then 
alone shall we have succeeded in rendering the con¬ 
fusion of our national chronology quite confounded. 


UNRECORDED TIME. 49 

BARBARISM. 

To have made the matter complete, the Right 
Honourable Gentleman should also have favoured us 
with a new military mile, and a new geographical 
degree, and then we should have had a confusion of 
distances as well as a confusion of years. 

I quote not these examples as offering in them¬ 
selves any insurmountable difficulty, hut merely to 
show, if such he the perplexing varieties with 
which, down almost to the present day, we are sur¬ 
rounded, what must he the sum total of the varieties, 
and of the difficulties arising out of those varieties, 
which present themselves between the period of 
2000 before Christ, with which our first royal folio 
Table opens, and the present 1853 after Christ? 
And he the differences ever so seemingly small, 
when taken singly, they will, as generations roll on, 
become collectively very considerable. 

Indeed the accurate admeasurement of the year 
is a much more difficult matter than it is perhaps 
generally supposed to be, as we may conceive from 
the fact of its never having been properly adjusted 
in Europe until so late a period as 1582, or but 
271 years ago. The best admeasurement of the 
solar year, down to 1582, was effected, in the year 
1079, by Malek Shah Jalal-ud-din , the greatest 
ruler of the house of Seljuk; whose capture of 
Jerusalem, in 1072, we shall historically recollect, 
led to the Crusades of 1095. It was under the 
auspices of Pope Gregory XIII., who acceded 
to the pontifical chair 13th May, 1572, (year of 


50 PROLTJ SION A L REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

the massacre at Paris, night of the 24th to 25th 
August,) that, 503 years later than Jalal-ud-din’s 
corrected year, the final correction of the Calendar* 
was ushered into the world in 1582 ; and al¬ 
though speedily adopted in those countries where 
the spiritual supremacy of the Pope continued to 
be acknowledged, the Protestant and the Greek- 
Church States were so pertinaciously averse to 
learn even profane science under a mandate from 
Rome, and especially from that Pope Gregory XIII. 
who is said to have had medals struck in approving 
commemoration of the horrible massacre of St. 
Bartholomew’s night, 1572, just ten years before 
the introduction of the new calendar, 1582, that 
some, among whom the Greeks and Russians (of 
the parent Greek Church), down to the very latest 
years, have refused to admit the proffered improve¬ 
ment ; and hence the necessity of often adding to a 
date the °/ s or the n / s , to indicate whether we mean 
the old style or the new style, there being a differ¬ 
ence between the two of ten days up to the 1st of 
January, in the year 1700 ; of eleven days from the 
1st of January, 1700, to the 1st of January, 1800; 
and of twelve days since the commencement of the 
present century, or the year 1800. And thus those 
who still adhere to the old or uncorrected style 
celebrate, in the present century, their New Year’s 
Day, not on the 1st of January, as they profess, 
hut on the 13 th of January, according to the more 
* By Aloys, and Greg . Lilius. 


UNRECORDED TIME. 51 

BARBARISM. 

accurate calculation of Gregory’s new style. In 
England the new style was not adopted until the 
3rd of September , counted the \±th, 1752. 

It may here perhaps be not irrelevant gratefully 
to recall to recollection that it was an Italian, named 
Dionysius Exiguus, who rendered to history and 
chronology the invaluable service of introducing 
into Europe one general era for chronological com¬ 
putation ; i. e. he was the first who computed the 
dates of historical events from the era of the birth 
of Christ. Dionysius died in the year 536, and 
thus his system, or proposed general basis of time 
calculating, must have been promulgated early in 
the sixth century after Christ; but so slow were the 
nations of Europe in perceiving its supereminent 
advantages, that it was not until about the period 
of our Magna Charta, 1215, or about seven hundred 
years after Dionysius Exiguus first introduced it, 
that the practice had become general of dating from 
the birth of Our Saviour. 

From the view which we have thus rapidly taken 
we may, I repeat it, be assisted in forming an idea 
of the insuperable difficulties of reducing to mathe¬ 
matical nicety all the various admeasurements, the 
endless divisions and subdivisions, of that for¬ 
midable expanse of time which stretches from the 
first recorded date of history down to the present 
day; and those who have most vigorously laboured 
in the irksome and toilsome, and, as it would 
appear, the unprofitable , if not the impossible , field 
of early time adjusting, seem to have been much 

D 2 


52 


PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 


more successful in supplying us with arguments for 
believing that their predecessors in the same field 
of toil have been wrong , than in making us believe 
that they are themselves finally right; for we meet 
with hardly any who can' give anything like tranquil 
permanency to their early chronological positions. 
A chronologer, like a boxing champion of England, 
can overturn an adversary of previous renown, hut, 
like the boxing champion, he seldom long retains 
the belt; another starts up, and he, in his turn, is 
himself overthrown. 

We have, then, in our present essay, being de¬ 
sirous of getting over the ground as fast as we can, 
glanced at the history of mankind during at least 
(to take the very narrowest computation) 20 cen¬ 
turies, or 2000 years. But these 2000 years, we 
have stated, faded away before any portion of man¬ 
kind had arrived at the scholastic capability of 
leaving any written traces of their having dwelt on 
the earth, and even before we arrive at that point 
in time (viz. 2000 years before Christ) to which the 
earliest records of secular or profane history re¬ 
trospectively ascend. We are, therefore, of course 
precluded from assuming for these 2000 years any 
regular succession of historical divisions in time, 
or, in other words, any regular series of chronolo¬ 
gical computations. But because we cannot assume 
any regular time reckonings for this portion of 
man’s existence on the earth, are we, we have 
asked, therefore wholly to neglect and silently pass 
over these 2000 years ? and we have answered, no f 


UNRECORDED TIME. 

BARBARISM. 


53 


And why ? Because, although we cannot compute 
by time, we may in some measure compute by 
classification; for the living analogy of savage and 
semi-barbarian life will open to us the successive 
stages of man’s advancement out of ultra-rudeness: 
living analogy, as we have stated, showing us that 
man commences by being simply a hunter and 
fisherman, or indeed a war-maker upon all around 
him, not excepting even his own species, chiefly to 
satisfy the immediate cravings of his appetite; and he 
next advances into the rank of a herdsman, or shep¬ 
herd, and thence goes onward to become settled as 
a husbandman, or villager, and, by natural progres¬ 
sion, as a citizen. The movable village of tents or 
wicker-work dwellings will become the less unsettled 
village of huts; and the village of huts will by de¬ 
grees be changed into the more substantial and the 
more widely-extended burg, town, or city. Further, 
that all aboriginal inhabitants of the earth (if we 
may so term them) have, without any exception, 
wandered, or become gradually more or less settled, 
in little tribes, families, hordes, or clans, under petty 
chieftains or elders, until, by adventitious circum¬ 
stances, these have become amalgamated into larger 
national unions. 

To the several classifications laid down we cannot 
indeed assign any specific number of years, because 
various causes (to some of which we shall hereafter 
have occasion to allude) may operate to compel 
mankind in one region to linger much longer in 
particular stages of this advancement than in 


54 PROLUSIONAL REMARKS. 

BARBARISM. 

others; hut these classifications will, I say, answer 
as a sort of chronological clue to the progressional 
history of savage life. 

I shall only further, in concluding this recapitu¬ 
lation, state, that we have (while endeavouring to 
open to view what we conceive to be the student’s 
natural historical beginning and natural track to¬ 
wards written history) thus strongly urged (as the 
most judicious and philosophic mode) that some 
attention and reflection should he bestown on the 
unwritten periods of man’s history, because we con¬ 
ceive that it is through the wide and wildly-varied ex¬ 
panses of savage existence that we shall find at once 
the most satisfactory, the most attractive, and most 
commanding approach to the ages of man’s written 
annals—to the portals of recorded time. 

For not only is this course the best calculated to 
awaken the student’s interest, and to yield him the 
most solid and useful instruction, hut it may ulti¬ 
mately materially conduce to his more rapid ad¬ 
vancement through written time; for when once he 
has thoroughly considered the history of savage ex¬ 
istence, and what are the earliest natural approaches 
to civilized life, he will easily be convinced how 
worse than futile it would he for him (especially in 
days like the present, when, to keep upon a par 
with our neighbours, we have so many studies 
besides history to apply to), how worse than futile 
it would be, to bestow much labour on the weari¬ 
some, backwards and forwards, contradictory, and 
ponderous volumes, that have been ushered into the 


UNRECORDED TIME. 55 

BARBARISM. 

world on disputed points in chronology, which never 
can be determined , or on disputed points in the 
local and tribal origin of nations, which are in 
their nature equally «m-determinable, and in their 
results equally unprofitable; and which, if they did 
not wholly deter from following up the study, would 
be only calculated to divert the inquiring mind from 
the main, broad, and, as it would appear to us, only 
profitable road of historical study. 

We may then he said, besides directing the stu¬ 
dent’s historical observation to the memorials of 
man in his stages of barbarism, to have bestowed, 
in this introductory section, especially towards its 
close, some attention on the negative means of the 
student’s advancement, viz. the avoiding of much 
waste and laborious reading. 

And while with the negative means of advance¬ 
ment we close this division of our theme, with some 
observations on the positive means of advancement 
we propose to open the second section of this work. 


BOOK I. 


SECTION II. 

ANCIENT TIME from 2000 before to 476 
after Christ, comprising 2476 years. 

FORMATION AND PROGRESSION OF EMPIRE 
IN THE FOUR FIRST GREAT REGIONS OF 
ANCIENT HISTORY. ANCIENT LITERARY TIME. 
FIRST-SIGHT PHENOMENA OF THE EARLIEST COM¬ 
PARTMENT OF MODERN TIME IN TABLE V. 

In our last section, among other introductory and 
miscellaneous matter, while gathering glimpses at 
the History of Man in Barbarism, we inferentially 
pointed out the advantage of closely attending to, 
and comparing the descriptions of savage life abun¬ 
dantly supplied to us in Books of Voyages and 
Travels, which do in themselves constitute a 
branch of History; and thereto we may emphati¬ 
cally add the recommendation of a few visits to the 
so splendid and admirable collection of illustrative 
objects connected with savage life in North Ame¬ 
rica, which Mr. Catlin, the able, laborious, and 



ANCIENT TIME. 57 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

enterprising historian of savage life is still exhibit¬ 
ing in this country: such descriptive hooks and 
striking illustrations furnishing us, at once, with the 
best materials for understanding the real condition 
and attributes of man in barbarism, as well as the 
real origin and vital principles of all man’s social 
and political institutions; and best enabling us to 
judge, by comparison, of the authenticity or other¬ 
wise of the earliest records of ancient history. For 
human nature varies not materially in any quarter 
of the globe in its slowly-progressive advancement, 
in successive stages, from ultra barbarism to the 
most dignified and refined civilization. 

And the earliest written records, especially such 
as ascend retrospectively high above the period in 
which the author flourishes, being necessarily mostly 
compilations from popular traditions, would seem to 
require the confirmation of living analogy, in more 
recent time, before they can be fully admitted to 
our credence. 

The history of mankind, then, we have stated, 
begins with the history of savage life, and the his¬ 
tory of savage life in past time is amply verified 
to us by the various gradations of savage existence 
in the present time. 

1. UNRECORDED BARBARIC LIFE extends over 
2004 years, viz. from 4004, the Hebrew" text era of 
the creation, to about 2000 before Christ; that 
being the highest point to which even retrospective 
universal history has been carried up by Herodotus. 

2. Ancient History, or that compass of time 

d 8 


58 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

which in Europe we are accustomed to designate 
exclusively as the period of antiquity, or of an¬ 
cient written history, commencing about 2000 be¬ 
fore Christ, and terminating with the destruction of 
the Western Empire of the Romans in 476 after 
Christ, comprises a total of 2476 years. 

3. Modern History, commencing with the dis¬ 
ruption of the West Roman Empire in 476 after 
Christ, and extending to the present year, 1853, 
covers a surface of 1377 years. 

The three primary divisions of historical 
time, then, stand thus, viz.: — 


1. Unrecorded time, occupying 

2004 

years. 

2. Ancient history, ,, 

2476 

ss 

3. Modern history, „ 

1377 

Si 

Making a grand total, from \ 

the creation in 4004 before ! 
Christ to 1853 after Christ, ( 

5857 

ss 


of / 

This summary we may readily and advantageously 
commit to memory, and the grand total of 5857 
years we may mnemonically recollect as 58 and 57. 

And it will, of course, he understood, that, down 
to the birth of Christ, we keep continually dimi¬ 
nishing the numerical amount of years, so that the 
highest numbers before Christ are the earliest, 
while after Christ the smallest numbers become the 
earliest. 

Having rapidly passed our thoughts over Unre¬ 
corded Time, we next, on arriving at the confines of 



ANCIENT TIME. 59 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

written records, naturally apply ourselves to that 
OCULAR principle of tabular presentment which it 
is the main object of my present publication fully 
and practically to explain. 

We therefore now place before ourselves a copy of 
the fifth greatly-improved edition of the 25 illu¬ 
minated OR COLOURED CHRONOLOGICAL CHARTS tO 
which this work is designed to be an elucidatory 
and illustrative COMPANION; and we proceed to turn 
over quickly those four earliest great leaves of Re¬ 
corded Time, into which the 2476 years of ancient 
history are, for the convenience of memory and 
study, divided. Leaf after leaf, exhibiting monarchy 
after monarchy, will rapidly show us the dawning, 
the meridional, and the dissolving views of all the 
great empires and republican powers of antiquity. 

The first Table closes with the universal mo¬ 
narchy of Cyrus , and the dawning importance of 
the Greek republics; the second closes with the 
universal empire of Alexander , and the coeval 
rising of the Roman republic; the third closes with 
the universal conquests of the republican Romans; 
and the fourth with the wreck of the Roman empire 
of the West, and the rising of the modern States 
of Europe; and where each Table closes, the next 
in succession, without the intermission of a single 
year, naturally begins. 

We next take, singly, a more steadfast and con¬ 
templative survey of each of the four successive 
sheets, which jointly embrace the whole surface of 
Ancient Time. 


60 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

And if we cannot exactly phrenotype on memory, 
that is, impress upon the brain, through the eye, the 
whole of the details of each successive plate, as it 
lies within the compass of the eye before us, we 
may, at least, rapidly and deeply imprint upon me¬ 
mory its general and chronological characteristics, 
viz. its columnar form, its colourings, its com¬ 
mencing and terminating boundary dates, its 
large-letter heading, its most conspicuously typed 
marginal dates, and what events such dates do 
severally refer to; also some of the scattered typal 
distinctions which the most conspicuously court at¬ 
tention in the body of the sheet. 

In other words, our first attempt is to phrenotype 
time on the memory ; that is, through the eye to im¬ 
print the boldest outline features, and next some 
of the most important minute of each of the four 
tabular sheets of Ancient Time. The alto-relievo 
recollections of every column we separate, by dis¬ 
tinctions of type, from the diminutive or ordinary 
dates and detail. 

Placing before us Table I. of Ancient History, 
we first observe (and should commit to memory) 
the large-letter heading , including the total amount 
of historical years that the Table embraces. Table 
I. begins from the year 2000 before Christ, the 
highest boundary line in time to which' Herodotus, 
the “ father of universal history,” attempts to 
ascend; and it ends with the universal monarchy of 
Cyrus, as indicated, 555 before Christ, by the world¬ 
overspreading Persian purple. 


ANCIENT TIME. 61 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

We next observe the 

COLUMNAR STRUCTURE, OT FORM, 

of Table I. now before us. It opens with eight sove¬ 
reign columns, severally headed: 1, Egypt; 2, 
Phoenicia; 3, Palestine; 4, Aram (or Syria and 
Mesopotamia) ; 5, Assyria; 6, Asia Minor; 7, 
Greece; and 8 , Italy; and it is through these eight 
columnar headings that, with Herodotus, who knows 
of no other sovereign States or nations at this 
period, that we enter the portals of written history 
about 2000 years before the birth of Christ. 

Centrally, after the division of the Jewish mo¬ 
narchy, 975 before Christ, into the two separate 
kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the breaking of 
the first Assyrian monarchy, 888 before Christ, into 
the three separate sovereignties of the New- Assyrians, 
the Babylonians, and the Medes, we count eleven 
columns, all of which at the close of Table I., about 
the year 555, we perceive to be contracted into 
the three columns of the all-absorbing PERSIAN mo¬ 
narchy, and of the Greek and Italian republics. 

The broadest of the commencing columns is 
Assyria, the earliest recorded monarchy of terri¬ 
torial magnitude, and close to it we observe the 
narrowest of the eight columns, headed Aram, or 
Syria and Mesopotamia. 

By attentively surveying all th q peculiarities of 
FORM, 

induced by the varying characteristics to which 
we have adverted, we might very soon be enabled 
to fill in upon a blank tabular outline chart 


62 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

of this first great sheet of Ancient Time many of 
the memorable historical items that belong to its 
surface, in their proper chronological emplace¬ 
ment. 

The columnar absence (from Table I., for ex¬ 
ample) of nations of subsequent renown, may fur¬ 
nish us, in negative chronology, with the recollec¬ 
tion that all such absent nations are still historically 
unknown. For instance, it is not until we come to 
nearly the close of Table III., that we shall observe 
even the name of Britain; and it is not until we 
arrive near the close of Table IV. that we find Bri¬ 
tain to have assumed a continuously - separate 
column, indicating independence or distinctive sove¬ 
reign existence. 

The Colouring, 

or staining, in its most general application, calls 
the attention emphatically —1st, to the ascendant 
or most important national columns within each 
tabular era; 2ndly, to the most attractive or in¬ 
fluential period or periods of any, separate na¬ 
tion’s history; and thus serves in some measure 
as a guide to the student’s most essential read¬ 
ing. And without some guide we might very easily 
be bestowing our attention and reading on the in- 
consequential , or, as they stand in the Tables, the 
^coloured portions of a nation’s history, to the total 
neglect of those specific periods in which a nation 
may have held a universal historical celebrity; or 
we might be inflicting upon ourselves a great 
amount of totally waste reading. To economize 


ANCIENT TIME. 63 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

time in the prosecution of so widely branched a 
study as universal history, will he found to he a 
matter in itself of no mean consideration. 

The coloured columns, then (or any coloured por¬ 
tions of columns), within each sheet, I repeat, are 
the important ones, the UNcoloured are those which 
less immediately or materially demand our atten¬ 
tion and recollection. 

In fine, it is hy the colourings that we are di¬ 
rected to those vitally important first-sight phe¬ 
nomena of Historic Time, which in their conflict¬ 
ing and volcanic formations have given, to every 
successive tabular region, so undulating a variety of 
ever changeful surface. 

The colouring of Table I., differing somewhat in 
its application from the colouring of the other Tables, 
serves mainly to show by the horizontal streakings 
of the green, the blue, and the purple, the compara¬ 
tive magnitude of the first Assyrian (green), the 
second Assyrian (also green), the Babylonian 
(blue), and the all-overrunning Persian (purple) 
monarchies; Cyrus’s monarchy, as will be seen by 
the comparative extent of the several colourings, 
far outstripping the other three, although each of 
these in succession claimed to be a “ universal ” 
monarchy. In like manner, that the sovereigns of 
China and Ava have even affected to sway the 
heavens as well as the earth; ruling the sun, moon, 
stars, and seasons, in addition to those [anti-climax] 
“ Umbrellas ” under which they have brought the 
whole earth. 

The orange-lead streaks, under the Egyptian , 


64 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO TV. 

Hebrew , and Phoenician “GOLDEN AGES,” serve to 
call attention to the comparative periods at which 
these nations severally arrive at their so-called Golden 
Ages , which would imply a certain amount of consoli¬ 
dated institutions; although the obtaining of an im¬ 
portant victory, through the fall of one (merely phy- 
sically formidable) man, and the primitive use. of the 
sling, the rudest of all the missive appliances of war, 
in David’s day, would seem to argue so tiny a cha¬ 
racter of development as to he somewhat at variance 
with one’s ideas of a proximate golden age. 

The earliest registry of the Olympic victors , July, 
776, in the Greek column, and the foundation of 
Rome , 754, in the Italian column, the two great 
eras of Greek and Roman time-reckoning, are seve¬ 
rally underlined by the orange and the red or crim¬ 
son lake, colourings chosen to represent, during their 
flourishing career, the two most distinguished re¬ 
publican powers of antiquity. 

The continuous column staining of the orange 
commences at the bottom of Table I., with Pi - 
sistratus, the cotemporary of Cyrus; so that the 
coevally-commencing purple and orange may write 
upon memory, at once, that the erection of the first 
monarchy of primary grandeur , by Cyrus, is co¬ 
incidental with the dawning into historical import¬ 
ance of the first great republican power with 
which we are historically acquainted. 

And thus it is that we can, by the commencing 
orange colouring, further very conveniently affix 
chronologically the era of the rise of Greece by the 
same marginal 555 (the three fives) before Christ, 


ANCIENT TIME. 65 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

underlined with purple, which serve to denote the 
epoch of the erection of the mighty Persian sway. 

The marginal 555 (three fives) thus used to 
affix two great eras, as well as the earlier marginal 
888 (three eights), rising boldly to the eye, will 
readily suggest that as part of a system of 
Mnemonical Chronology, 
which is engrafted on the royal folio Tables now be¬ 
fore us, we have, wherever we could do so with 
rigid chronological propriety, seized upon figures of 
similar import for the affixment of great eras of re¬ 
collection ; because we thus avoid all danger of the 
transposition or reversal, either in memory or print, 
of the figures taken to denote great eras. Whereas, 
if we took, say the first year of Cyrus’s reign, viz. 
559, to denote his general era, instead of 555, we 
should incur three efforts of memory, i. e. we 
should have to recollect whether the date was 559, 
595, or 955; and although we might he certain of 
the three figures, we might by no means feel assured, 
on cross-examination , of the correlative emplace¬ 
ment of those figures; but if we take 555, trans¬ 
pose them as you will, they must come to 555, for 
555 constituting hut a triple repetition of one power 
of number, involve but one effort of memory, instead 
of three, independently of the greater confidence of 
memory with which they inspire us. In like manner 
the triplicate S. S. S. would be much easier of reten¬ 
tion than Y. P. C., or any other three distinctive 
initial letters, because Y. P. C. would he liable to 
six varieties of transposition, viz.:— 


66 


HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 


y. p. c. 
y. c. p. 
p. y. c. 

р. o. v. 

с. p. y. 
c. y. p. 


\ 


Thus involving a sixfold effort of 
negative or affirmative memory, to 
avoid mistake; while the triplicate 
8. S. S. would require but one effort. 


After having secured the boundary dates at the top 
and the bottom of the Table, viz. 2000 before Christ 
to 555 before Christ, we may next apply ourselves 
to the principal marginal or synchronistic 
(crosswise) dates. 

And first we prominently observe the 1184, ex¬ 
hibiting to us, cross-wise, the two great synchro¬ 
nisms of the building of the Py ramids and the de¬ 
struction of Troy; next we have 888 (the three 
eights), carrying us to the fall of Sardanapalus and 
the breaking up of the first Assyrian monarchy, 
coevally with the reputed era of the foundation of 
Carthage, as well as of the flourishing of Lycurgus, 
the lawgiver of Sparta. 

And we may further note in memory, before 
closing our first-sight glance at the bolder memorials 
which rise on the surface of Table I., that Phoenicia , 
the first maritime trading power, and the colonial 
parent of Carthage, is, at the era of the exode of 
the Israelites from Egypt, about 1500, sending forth 
CADMUS, the inventor of alphabetic characters , to 
Greece; and at a later period supplying architects 
to assist in the construction of the Temple, at Jeru¬ 
salem ; and that Homer, in the column of Asia Minor, 
is among the Ionians in 944 before Christ: that Sal- 




ANCIENT TIME. 67 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

manassar, 721 before Christ, destroys Samaria, anni¬ 
hilating the monarchy of Israel, and carrying away 
captive the ten tribes of Israel into Assyria and 
Media; and that Nebuchadnezzar, 587, destroying 
Jerusalem, makes an end of the kingdom of Judah. 

Such, then, as I have described them, are the 
headings, the boundaries, the great marginal dates, 
and some of the principal first-sight memorials of 
Table I., all so readily admitting of being com¬ 
mitted to memory, in their correlative emplacement, 
on the first great plate of Ancient Historical Time, 
that we could speedily almost place the finger upon 
any one of them the moment we open the Table. 

Having now exemplified, as I trust, how readily 
the eye may compass and retain the leading points 
of the classified surface of the 1445 years which 
Table I. comprises, we may turn encouragingly to 
Table II., 

which commences, without the intermission of a 
single year, where Table I. closes; and Table II., 
although it comprises but 248 years, instead of the 
formidable extent of 1445 years, which we have tra¬ 
versed in Table I., will perhaps offer subject-matter 
more narration ally attractive than Table I.; for, ex¬ 
cepting in the Hebrew column of Table I., we shall 
find the matter entitled to our minute attention but 
very thinly scattered. 

Moreover, as already is pointed out in Section I., 
it is not until we arrive at the era of Cyrus , that 
we gain any confident footing in the time-reckoning 


68 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

affixment of historical events, and get rid of the 
conflicting contradictions of earlier chronology. 

Herodotus identified with the age of Pericles 
the golden period of Greece, 444 before Christ, in 
commencing his histories from 2000 before Christ, 
which is 1556 years earlier than his own time, 444, 
and having little else than perhaps Bardic ballads, 
and other traditionary evidences, with scanty scraps 
of national histories, to furnish his materials, he is, 
we may he quite sure, ascending very high into the 
misty regions of mingled truth and traditionary 
fable; and thus he not unfrequently, in the vast 
stretch of the 1445 years of Table I., runs largely 
into the marvellous. 

From the 555 to the 333, the eye instantly 
compasses, in the purple and orange, the whole ex¬ 
tent of the two hundred and twenty-two years, 
within which are comprised the influential recollec¬ 
tions of Greek and Persian history; for the short 
compass of 222 years sees alike the monarchical 
glory of Persia and the republican glory of Greece 
arise and pass away ! both falling under the sword 
and sway of Alexander the Great. 

And at the moment that Alexander rears the 
second mighty monarchy of antiquity, viz. the 
Macedonian , indicated by the green colouring , 333, 
we behold, by the coevally-appearing red, the rise 
of the republic of Rome : so that the passing 
away of republican Greece we perceive to be coin¬ 
cidental with the rise of republican Rome. And 


ANCIENT TIME. 69 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

this, notwithstanding that, in the earlier part of the 
Table, we observe that the expulsions of Hippias 
from Athens and of Tarquin from Eome both 
happen in the year 510 before Christ. 

The reign of Darius I. Hystaspes, 521 to 4B5, 
the earliest invader of Greece, has recently received 
a greatly-increased interest from the inscription on 
a rock at Behistun (signifying “ the dwelling of 
the Gods”), a summer palace of the Persian rulers, 
lying between Hamadan and Kermanshah, which 
has been furnished to us by the adventurous spirit 
and high Oriental attainments of Colonel Kaw- 
linson. The inscription, which had never before 
been deemed capable of being deciphered, is at such 
an elevation as to be illegible from the ground 
below, except by the aid of a telescope, and it was 
only by the utmost ingenuity that any scaffolding 
could be erected so as to obtain an accurate copy 
of it. The marble rock on which it is inscribed, 
and of which I have seen a fragment bearing the 
arrowed-headed words, “ Greatest King of Kings,” 
is so beautifully cut, that it might be supposed to 
have been engraved with the chisel of a Chan trey, 
and is of such remarkable hardness of surface, that 
one might imagine it to have been the cutting of 
but yesterday, instead of being the cutting of at 
least 2338 years ago. This inscription, which has 
been given to the public by the usual handsome 
liberality and literary spirit of the East India Com¬ 
pany, having, in its execution, been personally 
superintended by Darius Hystaspes, may be said to 


70 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

be the earliest piece of autobiographic imperial 
history of which we are in possession. And while, 
toward the top of Table II., we have thus pleas¬ 
ingly to advert to so remarkable a memento of the 
reign of Darius I. Hystaspes, 521 to 485, we 
have, toward the close of Table II., at the over¬ 
spreading of the Greek (orange) column by the 
Macedonian green colouring, an equally imperish¬ 
able recollection of the reverence for genius ex¬ 
hibited so extraordinarily, by Alexander; who, 
amidst his rage against the Thebans and the demo¬ 
lition of their city, 335 before Christ, forgot not to 
spare the humble habitation of the poet Pindar : — 

“ Perish their city, down with ev’ry tower, 

But spare, oh spare the Muse’s sacred bower! ” 

This is 155 ^ears after the 490 in which Pindar 
flourished, or exactly 100 years after the reputed 
date of his death, 435 before Christ. 

The letter-press, under the Macedonian green 
colouring, will further show us the same Alexander 
who, in the year 335 before Christ, is demolishing 
Thebes and sparing the house of Pindar , to be, in 
the year 327, encountering Porus in the Punjab 
and erecting his altars on the Hyp basis (or 
Sutlej). 

He dies, in Babylon, conveniently for chrono¬ 
logical memory, 3^3, exactly ten years after his 
triumph at Issus, 333 before Christ. 

Equally identified is Darius I. Hystaspes , with 
the Indian Punjab , he having, in 508 before 


ANCIENT TIME. 71 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

Christ, effected considerable conquests to the Hy- 
Pbasis in the same north-western (or Punjab) 
districts of India, which, in 327, at a distance in 
time of 181 years, were again penetrated hy Alex¬ 
ander. 

Thus Table II. revives the recollection of the 
two memorable invasions hy the Darius I. Hys- 
taspes, of the Persian, or purple, column, and the 
Alexander of the Macedonian, or green, column, of 
that very Five-River (or Sutlej !) region of India 
which has so recently, and resplendently, shed new 
lustre on the British arms. 

The “ Five-River ” or “ Punjab ,” region is not 
unfrequently called the Punjab Basin , or Cup; 
the five rivers forming the cup or basin; and the 
river Indus , into which the five rivers jointly fall, 
the stalk or handle to the five-ribbed River-Cup. 

We perceive that so intimately are interwoven the 
histories of Greece and Persia, in Table II., that if 
we read the one, we largely read, at the same time, 
the other. The first (or Marathon) invasion of 
Greece by the generals of Darius /. Hystaspes, 
was in 490 before Christ; and ten years later, 
480, witnessed the still more celebrated invasion of 
Xerxes the Great, in person. Thus, from the 
battle of Marathon, 490, to the battle of Plataea, 
479, followed by the final evacuation of Greece hy 
the Persians, the Persian invasions of Greece occu¬ 
pied eleven years. To the great recollections of 
those eleven years the eye will he naturally attracted, 
as well as to the Edict of Cyrus , 536, for the re- 


72 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

lease of the Jews from their Babylonian captivity of 
70 years, seen in the subject column of Palestine, 
under the purple colouring; and finally, to the com¬ 
pilation of the Books of the Old Testament , 468, 
by Ezra, the restorer, in 458, of the Mosaic religion. 

The central cross-line which, from the marginal 
444, intersects Table II., I need hardly repeat, 
gives us the golden era of Greece, the age of 
Pericles. 

And these central three fours, 444, of Table II., 
we shall perceive, in aid of technical memory, are 
exactly the one-half of the 888, which, centrally, 
run across Table I. 

Table II., in the remarkable items of recollection 
that it embraces, may perhaps exemplify the in¬ 
terest that may be awakened in the mind by the mere 
glancing over the tabular leaves of Historical 
Time, independently of the advantage of having 
such Tables, during the more amplified reading of 
history, constantly at hand for synoptical refer¬ 
ence, and for the connecting of one nation’s history 
with another. 

Before quitting Table II., I may observe that, 
had the Macedonian Empire held together in its 
integrity, it is not improbable that the same charac¬ 
ter of warlike conflict might have taken place 
between the Macedonian monarchy and republican 
Rome as had previously been witnessed between 
the Persian successors of Cyrus and republican 
Greece. 

But on turning to Table III., in the twelve 


ANCIENT TIME. 73 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

columns beneath the widely-stretching green line, 
which has been brought over from Table II. to ex¬ 
hibit the extent of Alexander s empire when entire, 
we behold the twelve shreds of sovereignty into 
which Alexander’s robe of empire has speedily been 
rent. So that the Romans have not, like the 
Greeks, to contend against a monarchy united, but, 
most conveniently for their piecemeal conquests, 
against a monarchy dissevered into twelve separate 
columns of empire. 

The gradually-outspreading red of Table III. 
brings to our view, in the changing destiny of 
nations, this new feature, viz. that no longer 
the monarchical rulers of the earth, but the repub¬ 
licans it is who now carry aggressive warfare and 
conquest into the columns of all other sovereign 
States. 

But the puny scale of the Roman warriorhood, 
antecedently to Table III., as exhibited in their 
“village fights” of Corioli and others, as their own 
poets sarcastically call them, will be sufficiently 
evinced by the crosswise line of Table III., chrono¬ 
logically marked by the 222, the year in which, 
and not until which, the Romans have at last 
subjugated the whole of Upper Italy as well as 
the previously-conquered Lower Italy, 266. They 
have thus, according to their own date of their city, 
754, been 532 years, or above half a millennium, 
in subduing that little boot-formed country, the 
conquest of which, in our day, costs a detached 
republican army of France but a single battle or a 


74 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

short campaign. It is not until 222 (all twos) the 
Romans have subjected Upper Italy; and it is not 
until after the fall of Syracuse and the death of 
Archimedes, 2i2 (two twos), that in 210 before 
Christ the column of Sicily, as their first external 
conquest, is absorbed, as indicated by the over¬ 
spreading red, into a province of the republican 
rule of Rome. And it is not until the overthrow 
of the great Hannibal at Zama, 2o2, that Rome 
could prospectively aspire to become mistress of the 
world. 

Mark the mnemonical ten ability of the above 
three great eras in developing the destinies of 
Rome:— 

In the first of them we have the (three twos) 222 
In the second . . . . . 2i2 

And in the third ..... 2o2 

Thus the whole of the figures of the first date are 
twos , so also the outside figures of the other two 
dates are twos, with the central figure decimally de¬ 
scending first from 2 to 1 , and next from 1 to 0 
(nothing). 

And looking downwards in the column of Rome, 
in Table III., we shall find further technical aids in 
the 88 (two eights) before Christ, indicating the 
era of the first Mithridatic war, equally with the 
great civil war of MARIUS and SYLLA; also the 
two fours, 44, exactly the half of the 88, giving us 
in the Ides of March, that foul and ineffaceable blot 
on the memory of Rome, the deliberate assassina- 


ANCIENT TIME. 75 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

tion of Julius Caesar in the public Senate, just 
eleven years later than his first invasion of Britain, 
in the year 55 (two fives) before Christ, or just ten 
years later than his second and latest invasion of 
our isle, in 54 before Christ. 

We may, besides, technically and decimally , 
strengthen the following recollections thus, viz.— 

Before Christ. 

1st. That C atiline’s (Conspiracy, in Caro’s (Consul¬ 
ship, was in. g3 

2nd. The slaughter of (Crassus and the Roman legions 

by the Parthians in .... 53 

3rd. That (Cicero was put to death the year following 

the assassination of Julius 44> viz. in . 43 

So that, while Demosthenes , the greatest orator 
of Greece, poisons himself (in 322) the year after 
the death of Alexander; Cicero , the greatest 
orator of Rome, is put to death (in 43) the year 
after the assassination of Casar. 

Casting a further range of the eye over Table 
III., we remark, in the year 183, alike the death, 
in Bithynia, of HANNIBAL, the greatest of the Car¬ 
thaginian warriors, and the most dreaded foe of the 
Romans ; and of Philopcemen , “ the last! of the 
Greeks.” 

The marginal crosswise fine from 146 carries 
us, in the selfsame year, to the destruction of 
Carthage and of Corinth, involving the extinc¬ 
tion of the liberties alike of republican Carthage 
and of republican Greece. The columns of Egypt 
and of Syria constitute the two most consequential 
sovereignties that arise out of the wreck of the 
Macedonian Empire of Alexander. Near the top 

E 2 


76 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IY. 

of the column of Egypt we view, under the Ptole¬ 
mies , the golden era, 323 to 221, of the Alexan¬ 
drian Learning and Commerce ; and the column 
closes in the self-immolation of CLEOPATRA, last of 
the Lagides, 30 before Christ. The column of 
Palestine presents us with the Septuagint translation 
of the Old Testament into Greek, under Ptolemseus 
Lagi; and the later breaking away of the column 
of Palestine, by the transfer of the Jewish alle¬ 
giance to Syria, as indicated by the change from 
the dotted line of dependency to the rule line of 
separation between Egypt and Palestine. 

In Table I. Rome, underlined by the crimson 
colouring, first shows itself as a speck, 754 (deceiv¬ 
ingly small as the African " Ox-Eye” indicator of 
a storm) ; in Table II., 333, we behold the dawn¬ 
ing rise of that Roman crimson which, in Table 
III., spreads into an all-devastating hurricane of 
war, prostrating into subjection, as indicated by the, 
sooner or later, over-running red, all the sovereign 
columns of this sheet, save Parthia, which main¬ 
tains a real, and Palestine, which is allowed a 
sufferance, independency. 

In tracing out with the eye the first sight pheno¬ 
mena of the three earliest great leaves of time, we 
have in every successive sheet witnessed a universal 
change of warrior dominion. 

In our two earliest Tables the (historically-so- 
called) world , in its two successive subjugations, 
had bent beneath the sway of the single-handed and 
chivalric monarchs of Persia and Macedonia; but, 


ANCIENT TIME. 77 

TABLES I. TO IY. 

in Table III., the world, in succumbing a third time 
to universal dominion, does not, as we have already 
noted, crouch beneath a single arm, but is riveted 
in chains by a republican people; and here we 
behold, for our instruction, that a democratic 
State is no less prone to, no less fiercely bent 
upon, the enslavement of mankind than a single¬ 
headed despotism. 

But though the Romans, as republicans, had 
wrenched the sovereignty of nearly all the States of 
Table III. into their own hands, they had also, at 
the close of the same Table III., finally forfeited 
their own freedom; the imperial purple having been 
assumed over them in the year 30 before Christ. 
And thus the terminational boundary line of Table 
III., bringing us to the third great era of universal 
change in the political destinies of man, brings us 
also to the close of the republican and the com¬ 
mencement of the monarchical rule of Rome. 

After the achieved Roman subjugation of the 
world at the close of Table III., and the coeval 
organic change in the form of Roman government, 
the world sinks, internally and externally, into that 
lull of quietude amidst which, in Table IV. and 
under the rule of Osesar Octavian, the first of the 
imperial Csesars (30 before to 14 after Christ), it is 
that the BIRTH OF CHRIST takes place. And from 
this great era we cease to number chronologically 
downwards , or by diminishing years, and we begin 
to number upwards. 

In Table III., harvesting with her warrior 


78 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

sickle , one after another , fourteen out of the six¬ 
teen smaller columns , which that Table exhibits , 
Rome conquers the world ; in Table IV., pre¬ 
senting in its formation the opposite extreme of the 
small-columned Table III., in one broad and majes¬ 
tic column , down to 305, Rome rules the world, 
and the undisputed Roman paramountship canopies 
w T ith the Roman red the historical surface of 506 
years. But these are divided by the black cross- 
line, which, in the year 180 after Christ, intersecting 
this Table, divides, with Gibbon, the flourishing 
from the 

DECLINING PERIOD 

of the Roman monarchy—the flourishing, from 
30 before to 180 after Christ, occupying 210 years; 
and the DECLINING, from 180 to 476 after Christ, 
occupying 296 years. 

The next great feature of Table IV., downwards, 
is the separation of the Roman monarchy into two 
distinct , Eastern and Western, empires , under the 
two equally-beloved sons of Theodosius I., namely, 
Honorius and Arcadius, in the year 395, being 
twenty years later than the great migration of 
nations, 375. 

In adverting to our own Historic Memorials, 
which first assume a tangible form in Table IV., we 
perceive that after the second invasion , 54 before 
Christ, of JULIUS C/ESAR, who was the first with 
sword and pen (which in him were so wonderfully 
combined) to leave an historical imprint on our 
shores the Romans never deemed it worth their while 


ANCIENT TIME. 79 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

again to cross the narrow channel which separates 
the continent of Europe from the island of Britain, 
until the Emperor Claudius sent Plautius to com¬ 
mence, in 43 after Christ, that conquest of Bri¬ 
tain which was completed by Julius Agricola, 84 
after Christ; thus leaving an interval from Julius 
Caesar’s second invasion, 54 before Christ, to the 
commencement of the conquest of Britain , by 
Claudius, 43 after Christ, of no less than ninety- 
seven years ; and the time that the conquest occu¬ 
pied, namely, from 43 to 84, being forty-one years. 

Among the incidents and memorials connected 
with the subjection and occupation of Britain by 
the Homans, may he interestingly noted, the 
capture and conveyance to Borne of the brave 
GARAGTAGUS, by Ostorius Scapula, in 51 after Christ; 
and the cruel outrages inflicted by Suetonius 
Paulinus, in the tyrant Nero’s reign, on BOADIGEA, 
the earliest recorded British queen, in 61 . The 
building of the three several Boman walls across 
Britain; 1st, the Emperor ADRIAN’S WALL, 121; 
2ndly, the Emperor ANTONINUS’S WALL, 140; and 
3rdly, the Emperor Septimus SEVERUS'S WALL, 211. 
The arrival in Britain of Julius Agricola, accom¬ 
panied by his son-in-law Tacitus the historian, was 
in 78 , being thus hut one year before the terrific 
EBUPTION OF MOUNT VESUVIUS, 
under Titus, in 79 , which buried Herculaneum and 
Pompeii, and destroyed Pliny the Elder; Julius 
Agricola commencing his career in Britain under 
VESPASIAN (in whose reign the Coliseum was 


80 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

begun), one of the best of the emperors, and com¬ 
pleting his conquest to the Caledonian moun¬ 
tains, 84, under Domitian (the last of Suetonius’s 
twelve Csesars), one of the worst of the Roman 
rulers. 

The emperors who have personal identity with 
Britain are —Vespasian (then second in command to 
Plautius, hut afterwards emperor), who, amongst the 
earliest conquests of the Romans, subjects Vectis , 
Isle of Wight; CLAUDIUS himself, who, bringing 
reinforcements, lands for a few months, and is 
present at the taking of Camalodunum (now 
Maldon); Adrian ; Septimus Severus, who dies 
at Eboracum (or York) in 211, the same year as 
the date of his wall; Carausius, murdered at Ebor¬ 
acum, 293; Constantius Chlorus, who dies at 
Eboracum, 306, the father of CONSTANTINE THE 
GREAT, who commences his imperial career in 
Britain 3o6 ; Constantine the Great becomes sole 
emperor 323 after Christ, being exactly 64 O years 
after the death of Alexander the Great, 323 before 
Christ. The Emperor Constans, son of Constantine 
the Great, we find to be in Britain, 3l3- Finally, 
Maximus, in 383, and a Constantine in 408, each 
usurp the imperial purple in Britain. The usurping 
Constantine, crossing into Gaul about 408, is over¬ 
thrown by Honorius, 411, from which period the 
Romans never return to the island of Britain. 

A most interesting memorial of Boadicea’s reign 
I saw at Oxford, through the kindness of P. B. 
Duncan, Esq., M.A., keeper of the Ashmolean 


ANCIENT TIME. 

TABLES I. TO IY. 


81 


Museum , viz. a gold or electrum ( i. e. an argenti¬ 
ferous gold ore) coin of this earliest British queen’s 
reign, which, neither in its metallic purity and 
beauty, nor in its inscriptional data, appears to have 
suffered the slightest damage by the lapse of at 
least 1788 years, dating even from the latest year of 
Boadicea’s rule, 61 (to 1849). It is of a slightly 
convex, or dish-shaped form, bearing on the concave 
side a rudely-executed horse, with a well-formed 
chariot wheel, and various rings, as well as small 
crosses, or stars, and balls, indicative, most pro¬ 
bably, of the value of the coin; and on the 
convex side the word ODVOC, thus wanting the 
initial B; while, singularly enough, the only 
other extant coin of Boadicea’s day, which is pre¬ 
served in the British Museum, hears only BOD VO, 
thus wanting the terminational C to complete the 
BODVOO ; there not being sufficient space on the 
surface of either coin to admit the entire name. 
The Oxford coin was found at Stan wick, a few 
miles from Oxford, in 1849 [The year of the one thou¬ 
sand years’ commemoration, at Wantage, of Alfred's birth ,] 
by workmen inclosing a common field, amidst the 
gravel that was carted away in the formation of 
an inclosure watercourse *. 

An evidence like this would seem to afford 
reasonable ground for believing that the ancient 
Britons were at least some stages in advance to- 


* Of this coin I have given a 
mencement of this work. 


facsimile' in the com- 


E 3 


82 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

wards civilization of the islanders of the Pacific, 
and the aborigines of North America, of the present 
day. 

Indeed, the use of war-cliariots , never heard of 
in existing ultra-savage life, appears to have been 
as familiar to the earliest recorded inhabitants of 
Britain as to the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Cyruses 
of Persia, and the Alexanders of Macedonia, in the 
earliest periods of ancient time. 

Very many years ago I well remember to have 
had shown to me, by the late Bev. Mr. Stillingfleet, 
of Hotham, near Beverley, an ancient British chariot 
wheel, in the most perfect possible preservation, both 
in its metallic tire and its wooden nave and spokes, 
which had, shortly before I saw it, been dug up from 
one of the ancient British tumuli, or Barrows, on 
the Yorkshire wolds, near Market Weighton, in the 
East Riding of the county. 

Two of these wheels, placed upright upon their 
edge, widely apart at the bottom, were crossed sup- 
portingly against each other at the top; and cano¬ 
pied beneath them lay the skeleton (or perhaps the 
sword, the spear, and buckler) of the fallen warrior 
chief. The large tumuli contain the ashes of the 
many, the smaller ones those of the chieftains 
alone. 

These chariot wheels, with the sharp scythes at¬ 
tached to them, being human reaping machines, 
may, not unlikely, have furnished the idea to modern 
inventors of the corn reaping machines. 

Two of the Roman walls across Britain were 


ANCIENT TIME. 83 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

erected before the decline of the Roman Empire, 
from 180; viz. Adrian’s, in 121, and Antoninus’s, 
140 ; Severus’s, the strongest of all, was erected 
during the decline, in 211. 

The total period of the Roman supremacy in the 
island, as indicated hy the dependent dotted line, 
instead of the disjunctive rule line, and hy the 
covering of the red colour, extends from 43 to 411 
after Christ, giving a total period of 368 years. 

The withdrawal of the authority of Rome, in 411 , 
is exactly 200 years later than the building of the 
last of the three walls across Britain, viz. Severus’s, 

in 211. 

The short column of the Jews, in Table IV., 
radiant with 

THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, 
is darkened, 33 after the birth of Christ, by the 

CRUCIFIXION*. 

Judcea is finally subdued, 73, and totally desolated 
by the Romans, 135; the Jews, thenceforth wan¬ 
derers, ceasing, to the present time, to constitute a 
State. 

Amongst the latest memorials of interest con¬ 
nected with the expiring column of the Jews, will 
not fail to be recollected the capture of Josephus, 
the Jewish historian, during the campaigns of Ves- 

* The cruel death of the cross was not especially used in 
the case of our Savour, but was then, as it still is, a com¬ 
mon mode of execution in the East. The cross, with many 
Eastern nations, is what the gallows used to be with us. 


’84 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

pasi'an and his son Titus, in Palestine, 67-68, and 
the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, in the year 
70 after Christ, being hut eight years before Julius 
Agricola was sent, in 78, by Vespasian, to complete 
the conquest of Britain. Moses was the earliest, 
and Josephus may he regarded as the latest, his¬ 
torian of the Jews. 

We have already remarked that, dating from the 
foundation of Borne, 754, the Homans were oc¬ 
cupied to 222, i • e. during^/m? hundred and thirty - 
two years, in subjecting all Italy; and that, before 
they had attained to universal sovereignty, 80 before 
Christ, seven hundred and tiventyfour years had 
passed away; remarkably contrasting with the so 
rapidly acquired universal sovereignties of Cyrus and 
Alexander. But if the Homan universal sovereignty 
was so much slower in acquisition than the Persian 
and Macedonian, so, as will he seen by the compara¬ 
tive continuation of the colourings in purple, green, 
and red, was the Roman universality of correspond¬ 
ingly longer duration than either of the other two. 

To recapitulate: the great outline formations of 
the four Tables of ancient time stand thus, viz.— 
Table I. commences with eight columns, at the 
period of 2000 before Christ; and closes with 
the purple-coloured empire of Cyrus, 555 be¬ 
fore Christ, coevally with the commencing 
greatness of the Greeks, in orange colouring. 
Table II. commences, 555, with seven columns, 
among which, most memorably, are seen the 
purple Persian monarchy and the orange - 


ANCIENT TIME. 85 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

coloured Greek republics; and it closes' with 
the Macedonian ^r^^-coloured monarchy of 
Alexander the Great, and the rising red- 
coloured Roman republic, 333—307. 

Table III. commences with the Macedonian green, 
overstreaking the several sovereign States into 
which Alexander’s monarchy becomes disse¬ 
vered ; and centrally exhibits the gradually 
outspreading Roman red; and it closes with 
the universal sovereignty of the Romans, as 
indicated by the red colour overflowing and 
terminating all the sovereign columns, except 
two, as they have severally, by the year 30 
before Christ, become merged, as mere pro¬ 
vinces, into the vast Roman rule. 

Finally, 

Table IV., commencing with 30 before, and ending 
476 after Christ, exhibits, by its one broad 
column and its one overspreading colouring, 
that monopoly of rule which is exercised by 
the imperial Csesars during 506 years. 

And if I have succeeded in making myself un¬ 
derstood, it will, I trust, by this time have become 
fully apparent to the reader that, by thus dividing, 
separately colouring, and mnemonically marking 
the most tenable chronological eras of empire, we 
have secured to ourselves a TRIPLICATE power 
of memory for aiding us in the retention of the 
great outline features or formations of ancient 
time, viz.:— 

1st. By the changing columnar structure, or 


86 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

the peculiarities of linear form in every 
consecutive sheet; 

2ndly. By the changing adaptations of various 
colouring, correspondingly to every change 
of empire; 

And 3rdly. By tlio mnemonical appliance of pe¬ 
culiarly tenable dates deeply to affix great eras 
of recollection. 

And bad, indeed, must be the memory that cannot, 
under this conjunctive threefold aidancy, rapidly 
and for ever secure the whole consecutive suite of 
the great'eras of change thus vividly depicted on 
the four tabular regions of ancient historical time. 

Such portions of the four Tables which we have 
ranged over as might advisedly be committed to 
memory, viz. 1, the large letter table headings; 
2, the national column headings; 3, the com - 
meriting and terminational dates and eras ; 4, some 
of the most consequential marginal dates, and what 
such dates apply to; 5, the national colourings; 
and 6, the prominent mnemonical aidancy of 
technical numbers, as well as lists of the Persian 
monarchs and the Homan emperors, together with 
a very limited number of interrogatory exercises, I 
propos^for the convenience of class use, to publish 
separately, as “ The Student’s Theory and Thrift 
Book of Combinative and Corroborative Historic 
Memory.” 

Language, whether applied orally or in written 
composition, as the rhetoric of the tongue or of the 
pen, being the sole vehicle for embodying and 


ANCIENT TIME. 87 

TABLES I. TO IY. 

transfusing thought—being the sole carrier or con¬ 
ducting medium for dispersing knowledge, and as 
having ever acted as a potent lever in the affairs of 
men, is so peculiarly deserving of the early atten¬ 
tion of the inquirer into the history of mankind, that 
the history of literature, jointly with general 
history, ought never to he lost sight of. 

Auxiliarily, therefore, to the chronological 
Tables of ancient history will be found, chronogi- 
cally arranged, in Table XVI., Literature (A), 
ALL THE AUTHOKS OF ANTIQUITY, 
in their several national columns. Literary history 
is given in a separate series of Tables; for it is part 
of our ocular system first to secure, as the primary 
bases of chronological classification, the naturally 
formed grand eras in every variety of historical 
time of which we may treat. And universal 
literary history not admitting of the same grand 
divisions as universal political or national history, 
required to be separately arranged. We have, 
however, conjoined a telegraphing side column 
of leading historical events, by means of which we 
may connectingly at once refer from the Tables of 
history to the writers of any period of great political 
interest, as, for instance, to ascertain 

Who were the writers of Cyrus’s day at the era 
of the 555 ? 

Who in the age of Pericles, the golden era of 
Greece, about 444 before Christ ? 

Or who in Alexander’s day, at the period of the 

333? 


88 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

For we have only to look synchronically, cross¬ 
wise, from any one of those great historical dates 
in the side column of “ Important Political Events,” 
in Table XVI., to gain a view in the different na¬ 
tional literary columns (coloured in correspondence 
with the national colourings of the historical Tables) 
of all the contemporary authors of different nations. 

Or, vice versa , we can by the same great dates 
refer from the Tables of authors to the Tables of 
history, to remind ourselves, preparatively to the 
reading of any author, of all the recollections of 
political history connected with the period in which 
such author flourishes. 

And if we never relaxed in the reading (whether 
in translation or in the original) of any author, 
without first surveying his tabular position on the 
literary surface of nations, as well as on the his¬ 
torical surface of his day, we should gain the same 
advantage that we, in the reading of geography, 
obtain by a previous survey, on a geographical 
map, of the geographical position of the region or 
city that we are about to read of. 

If geographical maps have relieved us from a 
chaos of confusion as to the correlative distribu¬ 
tions of place, so will chrono-historical and biogra¬ 
phical charts equally relieve us from confusion as 
to the correlative distributions of time; that form 
of mapped presentment which gives perspicuity to 
the one eye of history, viz. GEOGRAPHY, being 
equally, as I am now endeavouring to show, adapt¬ 
able to theu^rEYE of history, viz. CHRONOLOGY. 


ANCIENT TIME. 89 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

The four Tables of literature are, like the Tables 
of universal history, of columnar, comparative, syn¬ 
chronistic, and separately-national structure; and 
the colourings of the literary national columns cor¬ 
respond, as already remarked, with the colourings 
that are applied to the several historical columns in 
the first series of Tables. The graduated varieties 
of type will of course be understood to indicate 
comparative grades of genius, excellence, or cele¬ 
brity in the authors. 

By applying the same principles of generalized 
or large-leaved structure to the literary, as to the 
general historical series of Tables, we are enabled to 
show what are the general great eras of change in 
literary time, as they come in succession; and to 
collect at a synchronical glance [in Table XVI., 
Literature (A), for example] not only when the na¬ 
tionally various chief writers of antiquity flourished, 
correlatively to each other, but also what compara¬ 
tive advantages one nation possessed over another 
as to anterior models of literary composition. 

For instance, accustomed at school to begin with 
Latin authors, we naturally acquire a pre-impression, 
that the Latin authors must be the earliest writers 
of antiquity (else why begin with them first?); 
and although we might be orally told to-day that 
the Greek literature was of earlier date than the 
Koman, we might, by to-morrow, although recol¬ 
lecting that one literature was developed long before 
the other, still fall into doubt as to which of the 
two was the older, viz. the Greek or the Latin ? 


90 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

Bat if we once survey, above the red colouring 
of the Roman column of Table XVI., that im¬ 
mense blank which so eloquently tells of the ab¬ 
sence of even the homeliest Roman literature, 
down to 300 before Christ, we shall never after¬ 
wards ask ourselves whether the Roman Horace 
and Virgil, or the Greek Euripides and Sophocles 
flourished the first ? for we shall instantly per¬ 
ceive that nearly half a millennium intervenes be¬ 
tween the golden era of the Grecian and the 
meridian glory of the Roman literature ; the age 
of Pericles being identified with the 444 before 
Christ, and the Augustan age not until 30 before 
to 14 after Christ. Indeed, not until thirty-three 
years after the era of Alexander, 333> do we see 
any author whatever in the Roman column; 
C. Eahius Pictor, the first recorded author, not 
appearing until 300 before Christ; and not until 
CICERO, 106 to 43, do we behold any LARGE 
CAPITAL name among the Romans. 

In looking connectingly at the history and 
the coeval literature of the two great republican 
powers of antiquity, we are struck by observing that 
they each attain to their twofold political and lite¬ 
rary glory in the selfsame eras of time; so that 
one date in each case serves the double purpose of 
alike affixing the separate data of the climax of 
national literature and of ?iaiional empire ; the 
Greeks having alike attained to their highest- pitch 
of political influence and their meridian era of 
literary fame in the age of Pericles, 444; and the 


ANCIENT TIME. 91 

TABLES I. TO IY. 

Romans having equally attained to their highest 
ascent of power and their meridional celebrity in 
literature in the age of Augustus, 30 before to 14 
after Christ. 

Modern history will, too (alike in monarchical 
Arabia and republican Italy), furnish us with further 
exemplifications of the coeval rise and fall of na¬ 
tional literature with the rise and fall of national 
power, thus pleasingly associating, as identical in 
time and in memory, the meridians of the mind 
with the meridians of empire; great developments 
of successful national energy seeming to call forth 
corresponding efforts of national genius. 

We may further remark, in contemplating Table 
XVI., how much more durable is the empire of the 
mind than even the mightiest political arm of power. 
The political grandeur, nay the very national ex¬ 
istence, alike of Greece and the infinitely greater 
Rome, have long since passed away; but to their 
literary empire mankind, in Europe, continue to do 
homage to the present day. 

In looking from the column of historical events, 
in Table XVI., crosswise from CYRUS, 555 , we 
observe iEsop, Pythagoras, and Anacreon among 
his cotemporaries; preceded by SOLON, 594, and 
Thales, who predicts the total solar eclipse of 5 85, 
two of the seven wise men of Greece. Crosswise 
from Pericles, 444, we behold SOPHOCLES, 
HERODOTUS, EURIPIDES, THUCYDIDES, 
Aristophanes, and HIPPOCRATES, with other 
memorable names; while on the same alignement 


92 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

with ALEXANDER, 333, we observe Demos¬ 
thenes, ARISTOTLE, and Diogenes the Cynic 
(and his tub); together with Aristobulus and 
PtoleMjEUS Lagi, living historians of Alexanders 
day. Diogenes, too, we may recollect, died in the 
self -same year with Alexander, viz. 323 \ and both 
(the Philippic) Demosthenes and the philosophic 
ARISTOTLE die the following year, viz. 322. 
And in the interim betiveen Pericles, 444, and 
Alexander, 333, we have SOCRATES, who perishes 
399, Xenophon, and PLATO. 

Question. —To what war, and what Table, does 
the solar eclipse of 585 refer ? 

Answer. —To a war between Cyaxares , King of 
Media, and Alyattes , King of Lydia, the father of 
Croesus, in the lower part of the columns of Media 
and Asia Minor, Table I. Thales subsequently con¬ 
structs the bridge on which Croesus crosses the 
Halys, previously to his overthrow by Cyrus, 548. 

Question. — What Roman authors flourished 
during the reign of Trajan (98 to 117), styled the 
“best” of the Roman emperors? 

Answer. — Tacitus , Suetonius , historians, and 
Pliny the Younger, who wrote the Panegyric on the 
Emperor Trajan , in ten books. 

Question. —Does any monument rise in memory 
on the mention of Trajan ? 

Answer. —Yes; Trajan s Pillar , at Rome. So 
that the Pillar and the Panegyric rise up in 
memory together. 

Having thus arrived at the termination of ancient 


ANCIENT TIME. 93 

TABLES I. TO IY. 

history (at the close of Table IV.) in arriving at the 
final dissolution of the western half of the Roman 
rule, 476 after Christ; and having shown how the 
literary history may conveniently be combined with 
the more general history of nations, we next pro¬ 
ceed, in Table V., to 

MODERN HISTORY, 

for where the Old World of history breaks up, the 
New World of history begins. 

At the close of Tables I. and II., we beheld 
empire sweeping away empire; at the close of Table 

III. we arrived at a new variety of universal 
sovereignty, the world having been then, for the 
first and (hitherto) only time, subjugated by a re¬ 
publican people. 

But toward the terminational confines of Table 

IV. , bringing us to the fourth great era of changing 
empire, we have from about 375 and 395, when 
fast approaching, and, in 476, when arriving at -the 
close of ancient history, so uniquely astounding an 
era of change in the features of universal history, 
presented to us in our 

HISTORICAL TRANSITION, 

OUT OF ANCIENT INTO MODERN TIME, that we 
naturally pause to contemplate it. 

The Romans, who had held a chief station amidst 
the columns of nations in Table III., and who, in 
Table IV., had for so many centuries exercised un¬ 
disputed sovereignty over the rest of mankind; 
again, those Romans, who for so many ages had 
occupied themselves in the subjection of barbarian 


94 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

nations, were now, in their turn, at the close of 
Table IV., to be conquered by barbarians, and to 
fall back themselves into barbarism. 

We are, in our day, so accustomed to think of 
nations only, as of sedentary character, that the 
GREAT MIGRATORY movements of 375 are 
to us of doubly extraordinary aspect. 

This was not one great people overcoming an¬ 
other for some specific object of ambition, or one 
great nation conquering smaller States one after 
another; but vast migratory concourses of innume¬ 
rable hordes, tribes, or nations, living under tents, 
and all huddling and crushing onwards together, not 
like modem armies, but with their wives and their 
children, their flocks and their herds, their goods 
and their chattels, under various rude leaders, exer¬ 
cising over them some loosely-acknowledged federa¬ 
tive sway; and each federation impelling forward 
anether; for instance, the Huns driving onwards the 
Alani, the Alani dislodging the Ostro-Goths and 
Vandals, and these again pushing forward the Visi- 
Goths; (the first impulse being given, as seen in 
Table IV., by the Huns, on their being driven out 
of Mogul-Tartary by the Chinese , 374) : all seek¬ 
ing to gain more room in new territory; and all 
ultimately directing, although without any apparent 
concert, the overflowing waters of warrior popula¬ 
tion, in various channels, to that widely-extended 
Roman frontier, through which they soon forcibly 
burst at various points. Those of the migratory 
masses who first broke through the Roman barrier, 


ANCIENT TIME. 95 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

would, by the continuously-accumulating tide of 
nations behind them, be forced precipitately into 
the midst of the hostile population they came to 
dispossess, and even over and heyond the territory 
they designed to hold as well as conquer. And 
thus Spain was obliged to disgorge into Africa 
some of the warrior multitudes forced into her 
bosom; and Britain, in this mighty spring tide, 
this volcanic heaving of migration, felt the waves 
of Saxon population, forcibly propelled from their 
own shores, rushing with increased violence upon 
her insular borders. In short, every corner of 
Western Europe must, either directly or indirectly, 
have sensibly felt the shock of that great migra¬ 
tion of nations which so totally re-undulated and 
fragmented the whole political surface of Europe. 

Out of the midst of such an armed chaos, such 
a bed of anarchy, there must have been trampling 
down of friends as well as foes, and extermination 
of a large portion of the population previously ruled 
by the Romans; and hundreds of years of tribal 
broils and buffetings, before mankind in Europe 
could settle down into anything approaching to 
tranquillity again. But the doings in detail of such 
tempestuously-chaotic days it would be as hopeless 
as uninstructive for us to attempt to follow; and if 
there did even exist the possibility of our retracing 
them, they, like the tribal warfare of the aborigines 
in America and Africa of the present day, would, 
after all, as the great Milton expresses it, but fur¬ 
nish an endless narration of the “ Combats of Kites 
and Crows.” 


96 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES I. TO IV. 

It is, however, consolatory to us to know that, 
even out of such a chaos as this, man could lift 
himself up, by his own strength and endurance, 
into civilization again, as manfully as in our first 
section of this work we saw that he could raise 
himself triumphantly out of his primary lair of 
barbarity. For here we behold the formative origin 
of the existing, and now so highly cultured, modern 
nations of Western Europe. 

The appellations of “ Goths," “ Franks,” “ Van¬ 
dals,” and otherwise, appear to have been generic 
rather than specific, and comprehending an indefi¬ 
nite number of loosely-connected tribes or clans, 
just as the general name of “ Britons " was applied 
to the numerous small clans, tribes, or nations, 
either partly or wholly independent of each other, 
who occupied Britain at the time of the Roman 
invasions. 

Gradually, however, amalgamating into the ap¬ 
pearance of monarchies, we find recorded (at the 
close of Table IV., and in Table V.), a kingdom 
of THE Visi-Goths (in Southern France) with 
Toulouse as their capital, 416; a kingdom of the 
Vandals (in Africa) with Carthage as their capital, 
429; a kingdom of the Franks (in Belgic Gaul), 
429 ; and a kingdom of the Ostro-Goths (in 
Italy), 489-93. 

Of the ORIGIN of those great branch appellations 
among the Germanic migrators (most probably first 
applied to them by stranger-nations, as most other 
national designations ever have been), there have, 
of course, been many speculations, but probably 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 97 

TABLE V. 

none of them accepted as finally satisfactory solu¬ 
tions. 

The FRANKS are said to have obtained their name 
from being all free men; and, although it is difficult 
to know how they could be upon a different footing 
of freedom to their rude and barbarous neighbours, 
they might nationally, in some form or other, have 
exhibited a more fierce and fiery impatience of con¬ 
trol than other tribal confederative unions. 

The GOTHS are said, and probably upon good 
grounds, to have derived their designation from the 
natural goodness or friendliness of their disposition. 
“ Got,” or “ Gott,” (whence our word God!) with 
the silent li signifying evidently good; and the 
word “ Got-hen ” (or “ Gothen” Goths), with the 
silent h , like the modern “guts n,” or the Low- 
German “ gouds n,” or “gouts n,” being also equiva¬ 
lent to good; and as applied in the plural to a 
nation, would signify “ the good” 

The VANDALS, also of Germanic origin with the 
Franks and the Goths, might equally with them 
have a Germanic appellation. 

Vandal, written as here exhibited, would seem to 
show us nothing of lingual Germanic derivation. 
But the word “ Wandeln ” signifies to “ wander,” 
and the Germans as invariably pronounce the w 
like our v, as do those good natives of the City of 
London, who, adhering to the pronunciation of 
their Saxon progenitors, change Wife, West-Wick¬ 
ham, and Windy, into Vife, Vest-Vickham, and 
Vindy. 


F 


98 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

And thus the pronunciation of the verb “ Wan- 
deln ,” or “ Vandeln," to wander, brings us so 
closely to the substantive Vandal , that we seem to 
see our way to a Saxonic derivation. 

The Vandals might, not improbably, be more 
restlessly disposed to wander than other neighbour¬ 
ing tribes; and in this respect they certainly did 
not belie their name, since they wandered the 
furthest of any of the great migratory nations, 
having founded a kingdom in Northern Africa, 
429, extending from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. 

I am strengthened in the hypothesis of this 

wandering ” derivation by the fact that the Chinese 
designated the restless Tatar, or “ Tha-tha ” tribes, 
against whom they built their wall defences, as the 
“ Hing-kuo," signifying the “ERRATIC nations 
indeed the Chinese word “ Tha-tha," from its hate¬ 
fulness to the Tatars or Turks themselves, would 
seem, in its worst acceptation, to have a meaning 
equivalent to the term vagrant or vagabond with us. 

In further illustration, we may remind ourselves 
that the epithet of “Scots," supposed to be derived 
from the Gaelic term “ Scuit," or “ Scaoit," signifies 
a “ wandering hordeand of similar etymological 
derivation, most probably, is also the generic name 
of “ Scythians,” so famous in the annals of remoter 
ages. 

We may therefore, perhaps, upon the whole, as¬ 
sume or admit, without danger of being very far 
wrong, 

That the Goths, Gothen or Guten people, exhi- 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 99 

TABLE V. 

bited more prominently than their neighbours a 
friendliness or humane kindliness of disposition; 

The Franks , the most intemperate and vehement 
aversion to every description of control; and 

The Vandals , or wanderers , the most restless 
inclination to he perpetually locomotive. 

I throw out these observations with a view of 
eliciting a little thought as to the origin of national 
denominations while we proceed along the beaten 
track of universal history. In fact, from the so- 
often widely contradictory opinions of eminent anti¬ 
quaries, national derivatives, we may conclude, are 
mostly matter of conjectural speculation. 

In taking our preliminary survey of the first 
tabulated sheet of modern time, exhibiting, in 476 
after Christ, the form into which, after the first 
effervescence of general change, from 375 to 476, 
Europe is beginning to settle down, we shall na¬ 
turally be struck by the many-coloured and trou¬ 
blous surface of Table V., as contrasted in its aspect 
with the smooth one-coloured, and seemingly finally 
settled, presentment of Table IV. In the twelve 
separate columns at the top of Table V., we begin 
a totally new political organization of the whole 
surface of Western Europe, neither so barbarous as 
the Romans had found the world beyond the Alps, 
nor so instructed as the Romans left it; and now 
begins the real parentage from which nearly all the 
still existing nations or states of modern Europe 
originate. 

Our earliest care of memory, on breaking ground 

f 2 


100 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

in modem time, is to observe that, out of the wreck 
of ancient time, at the close of Table IV., into the 
historical re-structure of modern time, in Table V., 
but two sovereign States have an intertexture of 
both ancient and modem historical existence, or an 
onward survivorship out of ancient into modern 
time; these two States being the Eastern half of 
the Roman rule, which does not break up with the 
Western sister-half, and the Parthian , or the New- 
Persian monarchy; and both these, by way of dis¬ 
tinction from the rest, have, in Table V., their 
respective national colourings of crimson and brown 
pink carried to the top of their column headings. 
All the rest of the columns are occupied in their 
infantine efforts to constitute themselves into States. 
Such of them as are over-streaked, in their columnar 
headings, with the widely-stretched Roman red , 
namely, Germany , France , Italy , Venice,'t he Py¬ 
renean Peninsula , and Britain , are thus depicted 
as having emanated from beneath the previous sway 
of the now-broken-up rule of the Western Empire 
of Rome. 

Among the nations that first boldly meet our 
view on the outspread canvas of the first compart¬ 
ment of modern history, we perceive westward, to 
the left hand, the broad green column of the 
FRANKISH MONARCHY, and on the opposite side of 
the sheet, eastward, to the right hand, the still more 
imposing purple column of the ARABIAN KHALIFAT. 

So that, among the first-sight memorials of Table 
V., we have to affix in memory that two ancient 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 101 

TABLE Y. 

States alone survive into modern time, viz. the East 
Roman and the Parthian, they having thus a two¬ 
fold existence in ancient as well as in modern time; 
and that but two monarchies of conspicuous mag¬ 
nitude strike the eye in the first great region of mo¬ 
dern history, viz. the Saracenic and the Frankish. 

The Frankish monarchy founded hy Clovis I., 
486, arrives at its meridian under Charlemagne 
(768 to 814); and is broken up on the deposition 
of Charles the Gross, at the close of Table V., in 
888 . Thus the Frankish monarchy furnishes us, 
besides the 888 * with the little additional mnemo- 
nical aidancy of the three C’s, to recollect Clovis 
as the founder, Charlemagne as the meridian 
maker, and Charles the Gross as the final ruler of 
the Frankish monarchy; lasting from Clovis, 486, 
to Charles the Gross, 888 , 402 years. 

And, in like manner, the contemporaneous mo¬ 
narchy of the Arabs, founded hy Muhammad, 622, 
era of the Hejira, attains to its meridian splendour 
under the so celebrated Harun-ur-Raschid, 786 to 
808 , the perpetual hero of the 1001 Nights Enter¬ 
tainments, and of all the wild songs of the Arabian 
Desert to this day. He, too, somewhat remarkably, is 
the contemporary of Charlemagne, the most popular 
and powerful ruler of the Frankish monarchy; and 
with Charlemagne he interchanges presents. 

The accession years of these two so memorable 
monarchs happening to be, the one in 768 and the 
other in 786 , being simply in each case a transpo¬ 
sition or reversal of the two final figures, viz. from 


102 


HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 



we shall have no difficulty by this little technical ap¬ 
pliance in firmly affixing the respective years of ac¬ 
cession in memory; always recollecting, however, 
that Charlemagne both accedes the earliest and reigns 
the longest; and where names and dates are histori¬ 
cally so important as those of Harun and Charle¬ 
magne, it is worth our while to try the agency of 
mnemonics to give them the firmest possible affix- 
ment. The year of Harun’s demise is marked by 
the two outside eights in 808 . Charlemagne died, 
28th January, 814, being six years later than Harun, 
or six years later than the 808 . 

The millennial commemoration of Charle¬ 
magne’s death was held in Germany, 28th January, 
1814, being about three months after the liberties 
of Germany were regained by. the overthrow of 
Napoleon, in “ the BATTLE OF NATIONS," at Leip¬ 
zig! 16th, 18//*, and 19th October, 1813; and in 
the same year as the entrance of the Allies into 
Paris , March, 1814. 

The 888 which terminate the Frankish power at 
the close of Table Y. bring us also to the splitting 
up of the Arab monarchy ; thus the meridional pe¬ 
riods, as well as the breaking up of these two first 

GREAT POWERS OF MODERN TIME, are CO-EVAL. 

The 888 , in thus bringing us to the close alike of 
the Arab and the Frankish monarchies, the two 
first great powers of modern time, furnish this 
extraordinary stronghold to memory, viz. that in 
like manner that the first great monarchy of ancient 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 103 

TABLE Y. 

time, the Assyrian, broke up in 888 before Christ, 
the first great empires of modern time date their 
dissolution in 888 after Christ, thus constituting, 
by the doubling of the 888 before and after Christ, 
an interval of 1776 years between these two earliest 
eras of dissolving empire in ancient and in modern 
time. 

In the commencement of our own column, as 
well as in the commencement of any other of the 
newly-appearing columns of Table V., we shall, in 
beginning, as it were, the historical world anew, 
naturally find ourselves again beset with the same 
character of difficulties, contradictions, and obscu¬ 
rities, as were attendant upon the opening of ancient 
history; and we shall thus have to he as constantly on 
our guard against the mal-information of the early 
annalists of modern time, as against the earliest 
writers of the histories of antiquity; for the same 
pride of pedigree, the same credulity, and the same 
fabulous misapplication of the pen of the historian, 
are as sure to take place in the one instance as in 
the other. 

The earliest attempted historical depiction of our 
own country, at the period of the breaking up of 
the Koman rule in Britain, or rather of the with¬ 
drawal from the island of the Boman legions, about 
411 after Christ, is by the monk Gildas, who, dying 
about 570, wrote not of events of which he was an 
eye-witness, hut retrospectively at the distance of 
probably 130 years, or more, from 411, on the au¬ 
thority, as far as we can learn, of nothing better 


J 04 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

than the confused, doubtful, and exaggerated testh 
mony of local tradition. 

This writer, who has so servilely and indiscreetly 
been followed by some of our modem historians, 
has, however, by others (and especially by Mr. 
Sharon Turner , who has dealt out to him bis death¬ 
blow,) had his fabulous tales so ably exposed and 
so thoroughly dispelled, that he needs now only to 
have his name mentioned to serve as a general 
warning of the little confidence that is to be placed 
upon the early compilers of modern histories. 

His great mistake seems to consist in referring 
to the whole island of Britain those calamitous 
Border recollections which might largely have af¬ 
fected the localities of the Strath of Clyde, and 
about which Gildas, who was born, it appears, at 
Alcluid, or Dumbarton, might in his early youth 
have heard many distressful recitals. 

But it w 7 ould be repugnant to all probability to 
suppose that the whole of that Roman Britain which 
could supply such valiant bodies of youth to the 
Roman legions, and which must, at' the time the 
Romans quitted the island, have been pretty well 
acquainted with the Roman mode of warfare, should 
suddenly on the departure of the Romans, about 
411, have been seized with such marvellous das- 
tardism as not to have been able unitedly to resist 
the marauding inroads of a few half-starved hordes 
of Piets (Pehiti) and Scots, and thus to have im¬ 
mediately dispatched ambassadors, with that “me¬ 
morable letter,” as it is sometimes styled, which 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 105 

TABLE V. 

Gildas probably was tbe first to indite, praying for 
the return of the Romans; and equally wonderful 
it was that, after this mission failed, another should 
be sent off to Saxony, praying for the aid of Hen- 
gist and Horsa, who curiously enough landed in 
the Isle of Thanet to cover the Strath of Clyde. 
And this irrespective of the difficulty, in both in¬ 
stances, of assembling a deliberative meeting of the 
chiefs of the island to determine upon such embas¬ 
sies ; since, in the absence of posts, and of all other 
means of intercommunication, it might have been 
months or years, or even half centuries, before that 
which was doing in the Strath of Clyde could be 
made known to the people of present Cornwall. 

Indeed, as an evidence of how little mankind are 
disposed, in periods of barbarism, to act with 
unanimity, we may quote the words of Tacitus in 
speaking of Britain, viz.—“ Nothing gave the Ro¬ 
mans such advantage over the bravest nations as 
their want of unanimity. It seldom happens 
that two or three States unite against the com¬ 
mon enemy; and thus, while separate parties carry 
on the war, the whole are overcome.” 

Another notable instance of the little dependency 
that is to he placed upon monkish history, of even 
much later date than Gildas’s, may he quoted in the 
case of Geoffrey of Monmouth (1138), who pro¬ 
fesses to translate his Latin compilation of legend¬ 
ary traditions of King Arthur and the Knights of 
the Round Table (in the sixth century), from an 

F 3 


106 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

ancient British manuscript , the existence of which 
has in nowise yet been verified. 

The SAXON CHRONICLE is deemed to he 
the “only original and authentic source” 
of English history from the arrival of the Saxons, 
in 449, to the close of the Chronicle in 1154 (the 
year of the accession of the Blantagenet race); or 
during a period of seven hundred and five years. 

When these Saxon annals, found in the keeping 
of the monks of Peterborough, and ascribed to the 
monks of Crowland, were actually commenced, or 
by whom ? or from what materials the early parts of 
them were collated ? we shall probably never ascer¬ 
tain. We may, however, assume that there has 
been, as in most similar cases, some rounding and 
systematizing of the earliest and most confused 
parts of them, according to the ideas and capacity 
of the first regular compilers. 

That in these annals of 705 years, towns are 
mentioned as lying near the scene of different 
battles, which are now nowhere to he found, may 
readily he conceived when we reflect that many 
places then dignified with the designation of towns 
would probably he nothing more than an assem¬ 
blage of mud- or camp-huts, surrounded by rude 
entrenchments, which could he built up or knocked 
down at pleasure, as caprice, necessity, or conve¬ 
nience might dictate. These entrenched villages 
or towns, within which flocks and herds could be 
gathered for safety during the night, would probably 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 107 

TABLE Y. 

assume the general appellation of burgs , signifying 
mountains , from the mountainous positions in which 
they were for the most part erected. 

Although we are habituated to use the word con¬ 
quest, without distinction, both to the Roman and 
the Saxon occupation of our country, we must not 
forget that the two occupations were of widely dif¬ 
ferent character. 

The Roman legions sent over in the year 43 after 
Christ by the mightiest empire of its time, and sup¬ 
ported by inexhaustible resources, effected in 41 
years the regular conquest of the island. The 
Britons [probably from Brythw, or Bryth- em, variously 
translated as the separated, the mixed, the mottled, variegated, 
or variously -painted people or races?] or aboriginal is¬ 
landers, were fully aware of what they came for, and 
they therefore met them with all the forces they 
could muster openly in the field, until finally over¬ 
whelmed. And to such a mode of gaining posses¬ 
sion of the British soil no other designation than 
conquest can appropriately he applied. 

But the Saxons came as buccaneers rather than 
as soldiers; after long-continued piratical depreda¬ 
tions, during even the Roman occupation, they were 
subsequently drifted, by the great migration of 
nations, which began in 375, in more formidable 
numbers as plunderers upon our shores—first as 
temporary encampers, and next as more stationary 
or permanent settlers; leaguing, from 449, first 
with one native chieftain, then with another, they 
belted themselves as it were (before even the Britons 


108 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

appear to have apprehended much danger from 
them) in petty military factories half round the isle; 
and, by mere chance rather than by concert, they 
found themselves, at last, masters of nearly all the 
British soil. 

They poured down to the assault from the exten¬ 
sive opposite Saxon shores to Britain, the moment 
that the Romans were out of the isle, about 408 or 
411 after Christ; hut they do not pretend to have 
founded even the most puny of their States before 
455, when we behold Kent (on the reverse half 
sheet of Table V.) assuming the appellation of a 
kingdom! And not until 586, according to their 
own Saxon Chronicle, do they found Mercia as the 
last of the seven or eight kingdoms of the Saxon 
Heptarchy or Octarchy; thus leaving an interval of 
131 years between the founding of the first and the 
last of their little kingdoms; or an interval of 175 
years, or one century and three-quarters, after the 
Romans, in 411, had left the island wholly open to 
their inroads. And even after they had established 
their last kingdom, 586, they were' very far from 
having effected the subjection of the whole island; 
for in Cornwall, North and South Wales, Cumber¬ 
land, Galloway (and northward), they were still 
firmly and undauntedly opposed. 

The reverse of Table Y. at once shows us the 
three ascendant States to be Wessex, Northumbria, 
and Mercia. But Northumbria was too much 
divided within itself, by turbulent chiefs, ever to 
make effectual head against the other two. The four 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 109 

I TABLE Y. 

smaller States, viz. Kent, Essex, Sussex, and East- 
Anglia, were sometimes independent of, and some¬ 
times dependent upon, some more powerful neigh¬ 
bouring kingdom. Mercia , although the latest 
founded, becomes, especially under Penda , 626- 
655, and under OFFA, 755 to 794, who erects the 
“ Offa’s Dyke ” against the Welsh, and who cor¬ 
responds with Charlemagne, the most formidable 
kingdom, long threatening to overwhelm Wessex. 
But the BATTLE OF WILTON, by the overthrow of 
Mercia, gave the permanent sovereignty of the 
Heptarchy to Egbert, 827- 

By the same reverse half-sheet of Table V., we 
shall perceive that the Saxon settlers did not inter¬ 
mix with the aboriginal Britons, hut gradually 
pressed them backwards (as do now the Anglo- 
Americans press westward the aboriginal tribes of 
America), so that, from 586, as already noted, the 
Ancient Britons are hemmed westward into Galloway, 
Cumberland, North and South Wales, and Cornwall, 
and many, too, are pressed over-sea into Armorica, 
which from them assumes the name of Britany. 
The no?i-&dmixtme of the Saxon and the Gaelic* 

* The terms Gael (plural) or Gauls , substantively, or 
Gaelic , adjectively, appear preferable to those of Celts or 
Kelts , substantively, or Celtic, adjectively; for the Celts 
were, in fact, only a particular division of the Gael or 
Gauls. The Celts were “ Caoiltich ,” or the inhabitants of 
the “ woody country,” so called from caoill or wood, the 
same element which enters into the composition of the 
epithet Caledonii. The Celtic Gauls were the woods men 
Gauls, and they answered to the a back-wooc?smen” of 


110 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

(or Celtic) races is, indeed, sufficiently evidenced by 
the great substratum of the Anglian tongue being 
purely Saxon, with the slightest possible amalgama¬ 
tion of Ancient British words or idioms. If we 
compare the earliest Lord’s Prayer, for example, in 
English with the pure Saxon of that day, we shall 
find it nearly word for word to agree with the Saxon. 
The only Gaelic words adoptively intermingled with 
the Anglo-Saxon are the names of hills , forests, 
rivers, and other natural features of the country, 
as is pointed out by Bishop Percy, who well and 
acutely remarks “ that although the names of towns 
and villages are almost universally of Anglo-Saxon 
derivation, yet the hills, forests, rivers, &c., have 
generally retained their Celtic names.” 

No sooner had the long-continued intestinal war¬ 
fare of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms ceased, by 
their becoming settled and consolidated under one 
sway, than new calamities assailed the isle. New 
hordes of piratical freebooters, coming from the 
shores northward of the Franks, the Frisii, the 
Saxons, and the Angli, and from the eastward- lying 
shores of the Baltic, began to play the same game 
with the Anglo-Saxons that the Saxons had been so 
long playing with the divided Britons. These hordes, 
variously designated by different nations as Nor- 

Anglo-America in the present day. The general name given 
to the inhabitants of the northern part of the island of 
Britain, before, and for some centuries after, the Christian 
era, was not “Scots,” hut “ Caledonians ,” i.e. “ Caoilldaoin 
or “ men of the woods.” 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. Ill 

TABLE Y. 

mans (i.e. as coming from the north), as Ostmans 
{i. e. as coming from the east), as Waragi in Bussia, 
and by the Anglo-Saxons as Danes, probably from 
their thanes or leaders, after having made their earliest 
recorded descents in 787, and, at Lindisfarne and 
Weremouth, in 792, begin their more serious and 
regular irruptions by ravaging the isle of Sheppey, 
in 832, five years after Egbert, by the victory of 
Wilton, had become sole ruler of the Heptarchy, 
827* In 833, they defeat Egbert at Charmouth 
(Dorsetshire); hut, in 835, although then joined 
by the Cornish Britons, they are defeated by Egbert 
with great slaughter, at Hengston Hill (in Corn¬ 
wall) : this was in the year preceding the death of 
Egbert in 836. They do not again infest the Anglo- 
Saxon coasts until about 860; hut, in the reign of 
Ethelred I., the brother of Alfred, they land in such 
force that, before the accession of Alfred, on the 
death of Ethelred I., slain in battle against the 
Danes, 871, they have got possession of nearly the 
whole of the Anglo-Saxon territory; and Alfred, in 
874, driven into concealment in the isle of Athelney, 
has hardly a foot of land to stand upon, until, by 
the great victory of Ethandune, or Edington, the 
scales of war are again turned in Alfred’s favour, 
878 *. Meanwhile, by the widely-extended black 

* Thus, the two outside sevens , with 8 in the centre, 7«7, 
give the year of the earliest recorded Danish invasion, and 
the two outside eights, with 7 in the centre, 878, the era 
of the decisive battle of Ethandune ; these piratical inroads 
having been continued for ninety-one years. 


112 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLES V. AND VI. 

(flag) colouring of the Baltic, we perceive that not 
merely the small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are cut up 
column after column, and Wales, Ireland, and Scot¬ 
land, equally subjected to the Danish invasions, hut 
that even the consolidated Frankish monarchy itself 
is not exempt from their marauding irruptions. 
They run up the rivers, seize territory, receive re¬ 
inforcement after reinforcement, until, at last, they 
firmly erect the great dukedom of Normandy, having 
Rouen as its capital, in 911, which might fairly have 
competed in power with the monarchy of France it¬ 
self, dissevered as it was from Germany from 888. 
It is from the sixth ruler of this Northmanic duke¬ 
dom, as seen by the dotted fine down the column of 
France in Table VI., that, in 1066, England re¬ 
ceives, in the person of William I. the Conqueror , 
arising as it were from off the waves, the founder of 
the first Northmanic dynasty in England. 

This piratical black-flag and, in Tables Y. and VI., 
black-patch and black-streak era of the most northern 
European shores and of the Baltic, teaches us em¬ 
phatically the vastitude of power that, even in the 
rudest stages of modern European recollection, is 
wielded by whatever arm holds dominion on the ocean. 

The column which is stained with red indicates 
to us the continuous history, from the point where 
we left off in Table IV., of the Eastern Empire of 
the Romans, or of the Greek Empire, as it became 
denominated. For only one-half, or the western 
division, of the Old Roman Empire was broken up ; 
the other half, or eastern division, having survived 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 113 

TABLE V. 

the great rush of the migrating nations, had a 
codicil of existence of nearly 1000 years’ duration, 
viz. from 476 down to 1453, when the Osmanic 
Turks enter Constantinople by storm, 29th May, 
thus finally closing the wire-drawn existence of the 
last semblance of the ancient Roman sway. 

Justinian’s reign is memorable for the famous 
compilations of the scattered and confused Koman 
statutes into more condensed and systematized 
bodies of law; and it is also remarkable as the last 
splendid reign of any Roman emperor. 

The Greek Empire, or East-Roman, which so 
rapidly waned in extent and importance subse¬ 
quently to the reign of Justinian, wore at the time 
of this emperor, the last whose name appears in 
Roman capital type, a very formidable aspect; for he 
made, through his celebrated generals Belisarius and 
Narses, a resolute attempt to reconquer, and perma¬ 
nently to attach to the Eastern Crown, an important 
portion of the hroken-up empire of the west; over¬ 
running the kingdom of the Vandals, in Africa, and 
re-conquering from the Ostro-Goths the whole of 
Italy, which, however, was maintained entire only 
for the short space of 14 years, from 554 to 568; 
for, in 568, three years after Justinian’s death, the 
Longobards broke in so formidable a manner into 
Northern Italy that they soon constituted their con¬ 
siderable conquests into what is called by historians 
the Kingdom of the Lombards; it was, however, in 
effect (like the kingdoms of the Ostro-Goths and 
Visi-Goths), rather a State of wild feudalism than 


114 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE y. 

of regular monarchy; so much so, indeed, that at 
one time we read of a declared aristocratic form 
of government, consisting of no less than 36 
sovereign dukes, over the Longohardic portion of 
Italy. 

In order chronologically to impress on the me¬ 
mory the era of Justinian, we assume for it, as easiest 
of retention, the tenth year before the close of his 
reign, viz. 555 after Christ, in like manner that we 
indicated Cyrus by the 555 before Christ, making a 
total distance in time from the era of Cyrus to the era 
of Justinian 1110 years. The three fives after Christ 
thus flashing upon recollection, at once, the proudest 
period of the surviving empire of Constantinople, 
and the commencement of its subsequent so rapidly 
withering decay. 

The fighting Franks, like their compeer con¬ 
querors, in the opposite side column, the Saracens, 
had their Charlemagne and their favourite dynasty 
of Carlovingians, at the same period that the Arabs 
had their Harun-ur-Raschid and their House of 
Abbas. 

Charlemagne, son of Pepin the Short, was the 
second sovereign of the Carlovingian race, and was, 
as I need hardly remind you, descended from those 
celebrated Mayors of the Palace , Pepin d’Heris- 
thal and Charles Martel, who had, like their prede¬ 
cessors in the same office, assumed a sort of right 
to rule for the Merovingians, the descendants of 
Merovaeus, an early king or paramount chief; and 
having long successfully wielded the sword for them, 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 115 

TABLE Y. 

and having long exercised all the substantial powers 
of monarchy, thought that they might as well, at 
last, take also that little ornamental thing, the 
sceptre, into their own family keeping. 

The Prankish monarchs of the Merovingian 
dynasty had never assumed any higher title than 
that of king. Charlemagne revived in his person, 
in the year 800, the title of Roman Emperor, 
which had lain dormant daring a period of 324 
years! For after the abdication of Romulus 
Augustulus, 476, not one of the savage conquerors 
who planted his banners on the walls of Rome, 
would deign to throw around his brawny shoulders 
the dead lion’s skin, which he thought would neither 
grace nor profit him; nay, the very name of Roman 
was but used as a term of the most contumelious 
reproach, concentrating everything ignominious and 
contemptible. 

The revival of this once so celebrated title grew 
out of that intimacy between the Popes of Rome 
and the Carlovingians which had originated in a 
sort of truck between them. For the Pope, Stephen 
II., having conferred the sanctifying unction of his 
countenance on the usurpation of the Frankish 
sceptre by Pepin the Short (son of Charles Martel 
and father of Charlemagne), in the year 752, being 
twenty years after the defeat of the Arabs at Tours, 
732, received in return from Pepin the feudal grant 
of territory which belonged of right to the Roman 
or Greek emperor at Constantinople, from whom it 
had been wrested by the Longobards, or Lombards. 


116 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

Pepin marched down with his Franks upon the 
conquering Lombards, who were besieging Rome, 
and retaking from them a large portion of their 
Greek conquests, instead of restoring these to the 
rightful owner, he conferred, as already stated, the 
recovered territory on the pope. 

Again, Charlemagne , having finally crushed the 
Lombards and possessed himself of their whole 
Italian territory, 774, confirmed the territorial grant 
of Pepin to the pope, and, in return, Charlemagne 
was proclaimed ROMAN EMPEROR, 25th December, 
800; being the year of the accession of Egbert to 
the throne of Wessex. 

Emphatic attention is called by the patches and 
shading of the Frankish green , in Table V., to 
those influential transactions between the Frankish 
and Italian States, through which the pope, who 
had previously been nothing more than an ecclesi¬ 
astical dignitary, or bishop, residing within the 
duchy of Rome, a dependency of the Greek Empire, 
and bearing only the title of Papa , or Pope (signi¬ 
fying father ), in common with all other bishops 
(for it was not exclusively applied to the bishop of 
Rome until the imperious Pope Gregory VII. 
Hildebrand, issued a bull to that effect toward the 
close of the 11th century), became all at once a 
temporal sovereign; getting rid, moreover, of all 
further semblance of dependency upon Constanti¬ 
nople t by the final rooting out from Ravenna of 
those Greeks whose bishops the popes of Rome so 
rancorously hated, particularly on the score of pre- 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 117 

. TABLE V. 

cedency and of the title of “ECUMENICAL" or 
“UNIVERSAL” Bishop, assumed at Constantinople, 
“ a devilish title,” as Pope Gregory I. is pleased 
to term it. Although from the subsequent very 
willing adoption at Rome of the equivalent title of 
“ Catholic,” or “ Universal,” the holy wrath of 
the Roman bishops would appear to have been less 
directed against the title than against the bearing of 
it by the metropolitan bishop of Constantinople 
instead of its being borne by the bishop of Rome. 

The pope of Rome not only gained all this 
triumph and territory at once, but what was, perhaps, 
of still greater consequence to him, he got himself 
thoroughly hitched into that feudal relationship 
with the sovereigns of the Franks, then become the 
most potent in Europe, which so greatly contributed 
to his spreading over all Western Europe that men¬ 
tal tyranny which was neither less gloomy, less 
baneful, nor less degrading, than that tyranny of 
the sword which had previously from the bosom of 
Rome been erected over Europe, and which we 
beheld, at the close of Table IV., so happily, as 
events have since proved, broken up. 

At the commencement of Table V., Europe ap¬ 
peared to have recovered its freedom; but before 
the close of Table V. Europe was again in thral¬ 
dom ; that second Roman tyranny, infinitely more 
lamentable and direful than the first, had gone forth: 
the tyranny of the Roman warrior was a tyranny 
over the body alone, hut the tyranny of the Roman 
pontiff was a tyranny over the human soul as well 


118 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

as the body; a tyranny, too, which so sadly lasted 
during the awful period of 717 years, dating merely 
from the era of Charlemagne, 800, to the Lutheran 
era of mental emancipation, 1517; the exode of 
the European mind from beneath the tyranny of 
the pope taking place about the same number of 
years after Christ, as the exode of the Ahrahamites 
from Egypt (viz. 1500) before Christ. 

Charlemagne’s monarchy had, as its geographical 
boundaries, the Ebro, the Tiber, the Raab, and the 
Eyder; resembling, in position and extent, the 
recent monarchy of the French under Napoleon 
Buonaparte, i. e. including the States dependent 
upon as well as immediately ruled by Napoleon; 
and chronologically it stands as a sort of inter¬ 
mediate universal monarchy between the ancient 
West-Boman rule and the preponderant era of 
Charles Y. 

In turning again to Table V., we perceive that 
Italy , the heart of the old Roman rule, variously 
changing its masters, is rent and re-rent equally 
with the other and more distant-lying of the West- 
Roman territories. 

On the abdication of Romulus Augustulus, 476, 
Italy falls under the sway of the Heruli and Rugii; 

Next, under Theodoric, it constitutes part of the 
kingdom of the Ostro-Goths; 

Thirdly, it is reconquered by the Greek emperor 
Justinian and once more under one head for 
14 years; but, 

Fourthly, from the time that the Longobards make 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 119 

TABLE V. 

their irruption into it, in 568, it has continued a di¬ 
vided and piecemeal country down to the present day. 

Venice arises out of the waves thus: many per¬ 
sons flee from Italy to the little isles of the Adriatic, 
to escape from the murderous King of the Huns, 
Attila, 452; and still more retire thither after the 
irruption of the savage Longohards, 568. As fugi¬ 
tives and fishermen, all being at first upon an 
equality, a pure democracy prevails, and every island 
has its tribune. 

But they gradually become commercial upon a 
large scale, get wealth, erect towns, unite under one 
doge or duke, join their little isles by means of 
bridges; and thus we have, about the year 800, 
when Egbert mounts the throne of Wessex, the 
city of Venice assuming its present name. 

Looking then horizontally across the Table V., 
in the year 800, we have four correspondent points 
with which reciprocally and unitedly to impress the 
memory, viz.— 

1. CHABLEMAGNE reviving the Homan im¬ 
perial title. 

2. The Pope of Bome becoming a confirmed 
temporal sovereign. 

3. Venice assuming the name it now hears; and 

4. In our own island, EGBERT mounting the 
throne of Wessex (on which he made so distin¬ 
guished a figure) in that very same year , 800, in 
which CHABLEMAGNE (at whose court Egbert 
had previously been protected) hears himself first 
hailed as ROMAN EMPEROR. 


120 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

The horizontal streak of red colouring in the 
column of Italy shows the period in which Justinian 
repossessed himself of all Italy; the red shading , 
from the period of the inroad of the Longobards, in 
568, on both sides, indicates that Southern Italy 
still remains, in toto , under the Greek emperor, until 
his territory is narrowed, on the papal sovereignty 
being erected, into Lower Italy, part of which being 
overrun by the Saracens in 820, who also conquer 
Sicily in 827, Naples alone remains feudally sub¬ 
ject to the Greeks, as indicated by the single or 
one-sided columnar red shading; while the other 
side, as denoted by the single-line shading in purple, 
is feudally dependent upon the Saracens. The 
purple shading, from 711, on both sides of the 
column of Spain and Portugal, shows that the 
whole of the Pyrenean Peninsula has become sub¬ 
ject, through the rapid conquests of the great 
Tarik, to the Saracens. The horizontal streaks of 
purple, alike in the Frankish, the Papal, and 
Venetian columns, denote threatening inroads of 
the Saracens, or temporary occupancy. 

In the Papal and Greek columns it will be seen 
that, after long-continued hostile feeling andjarrings, 
THE GREEK AND ROMISH CHURCHES, from 861, 
BECOME FINALLY AND DISTINCTIVELY SEPARATED. ? 

Thus, whatever may be the fierce denunciations 
of the see of Rome against Protestantism, let it 
never be forgotten that these denunciations strike 
first and most forcibly the Romish Church herself; 
since she it was who set the earliest example of an 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 121 

TABLE V. 

ABRUPTION from the PARENT Greek Church, 
and from the authority of the (Ecumenical Bishop 
of Constantinople. 

It is highly gratifying to recollect that the two 
(most appropriately entitled) great monarchs, who 
stand forward to our notice in large Roman 
capitals in the new European world, towards the 
close of Table V., viz. CHARLES THE GREAT 
and ALFRED THE GREAT, like the great 
HARUN-UR-RASCH1D of the purple Saracenic 
column, although at humble distance from Haran, 
were both fosterers of literature, were both ardently 
desirous of promoting education and diffusing 
knowledge, and both so fully understood the 
advantage of cultivating that desert of the mind, 
that wilderness of ignorance, which they viewed 
around them. 

Alfred complained that, from the Humber to the 
Thames, there was hardly a priest who understood 
the Liturgy in his mother tongue, or who could 
translate the easiest piece of Latin; and that from 
the Thames to the sea the ecclesiastics were still 
more ignorant. “ Very few there were,” writes 
Alfred, in a letter to Wulsige, “ on this [south] 
side of the Humber (and I dare say not many on 
the other) who could understand the service in 
English, or translate a Latin epistle into their own 
language, when I ascended the throne.” 

This ruthful Anglo-Saxon ignorance, so closely 
upon the beginning of the tenth century, need not, 
however, startle us, need not raise up blushes 

G 


122 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

for our island in particular, since we read in Dr. 
Robertsons “Charles V.,” page 22, that, in much 
later time, “ persons of the highest rank and most 
eminent station could not read or write. Many of 
the clergy did not understand the Breviary, which 
they were obliged daily to recite; some of them could 
scarcely read it.” And again, page 279, u Many 
dignified ecclesiastics could not subscribe the 
Canons of the Councils in which they sat as 
members,” and which Councils had to teach or to 
settle what articles mankind must believe or not 
believe in, and what perhaps many would ultimately 
he burnt for believing or not believing in. Canons, 
therefore, of such paramount and awful importance 
had to he “ signed ” by such of the dignified eccle¬ 
siastics as could not write their own names; i. e. 
they merely had the sign of the cross affixed to them, 
precisely in the same manner as is now practised by 
illiterate persons, who make a cross (instead of sub¬ 
scription) to whatever document they may have to 
sign, with the necessary explanation, of course, that 
it is John Mason, Peter Robson, or whatever else 
the name may be, his + mark. 

Thus, when all were alike ignorant, no exclusive 
disgrace could anywhere attach; for when the dig¬ 
nitaries of the hierarchy could make nothing but 
their mark, Alfred’s priests might well not be able 
to distinguish their great letter A from their great 
letter B. 

The rugged old Charlemagne, of the Prankish 
column, who, by the rude daring, the energy, and 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 123 

TABLE Y. 

decision of his character, was so admirably adapted 
to the rule of mankind in a semi-barbarian age, and 
who withal could so fully appreciate the value of 
learning, conquered the disgrace of not being able 
to write his own name by submitting to the tedious 
toil of learning to write even after his finger-joints 
were somewhat stiffened by age, hut more by the long 
use of his formidable broad-sword. He had, too, in 
his military progresses, occasionally the vexatious 
bar to the taking of his writing-lesson of not being 
able to find a drop of ink in some of his Frankish 
cities. Charlemagne, we may mention, as charac¬ 
teristic of the man, had his signet engraven on the 
pommel of the hilt of his Szcord; so that when he 
applied the signet to his treaties with the Saxons, he 
was wont to say, “ Here is the signet with which I 
confirm this treaty, and here” (brandishing his un¬ 
sheathed blade) “ is the sword with which I will en¬ 
force its provisions, or punish the breach of them.” 

The planned and partly-executed cutting of a 
canal from the Rednitz to the Altmiihl, to connect 
the Rhine with the Danube, and thus to secure an 
uninterrupted inland navigation from the mouths 
of the Rhine , in the North Sea, to the mouths of 
the Danube, in the Black Sea, with ready access 
thence to Constantinople; his engaging the in¬ 
valuable educational and diplomatical services of 
Alwin (or Alcuinus), from York, the most learned, 
accomplished, and gifted man of his age; his inter¬ 
changes of friendship with Harun-ur-Raschid (the 
Khalif of the 1001 Nights’ Arabian Entertain- 

G 2 


124 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

ments); and his hospitable protection of Egbert , at 
the Frankish Court, during Egbert’s exile from 
Wessex through the jealousy of Brithric; all con¬ 
currently testify most favourably to the public 
character and regnal genius of the great Charle¬ 
magne. 

Eghinhart, who writes the history of Charles the 
Great, and who is the earliest historian of Germany, 
thus describes the arrival of Harun’s celebrated 
presents, in 807, being one year before Harun’s, and 
seven years before Charlemagne’s death:— 

“ Harun, who associated, with the returning 
Frankish embassy, ambassadors of his own, sent 
over with them an Elephant of monstrous size, with 
apes, balsamic oils, lard, and various sorts of oint¬ 
ment, colours, frankincense, and drugs of various 
virtues; silk mantles of such splendour, and in such 
profusion, as if he wished to empty the East of them 
in order to fill the West. He sent also a tent, or 
pavilion, and canopies of wondrous size and beauty, 
composed wholly, both in the sheet and the appended 
cordage, of cotton dyed in every variety of fine 
colours. Therewith was also an hour (water) clock 
of copper, put together with wonderful mechanical 
art. Turned round by means of water was a pointer, 
or hand, to the twelve hours in succession. There 
were, too, brass balls, which, as each hour was com¬ 
pleted, fell upon a metallic basin placed below them, 
the basin resounding as they fell in succession. At 
mid-day, or twelve o’clock, twelve horsemen at the 
same time, in correspondence with the hour, when the 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 125 

TABLE V. 

pointer had completed its revolution, issued through 
twelve windows, closing, by the shock of their ad¬ 
vance, twelve other windows which had previously 
been open. Many other peculiarities of this clep¬ 
sydra, or water-clock, are too tedious to enumerate. 
Besides the already-mentioned presents, there were 
two candlesticks of brass, of surpassing size and 
elegance, which, with the rest, were lodged in the 
Emperor’s palace at Aachen” or Aix-la-Chapelle. 

As regards the Elephant [which appears to 
have been a distinctive present, although classed 
amongst those already mentioned], it arrived some 
years before the other presents from Harun. Charle¬ 
magne had, on account of this rare and never-before- 
seen animal, sent three ambassadors to the Khalif, 
at Bagdad, 797; two of whom, Lantfrid and Sigis- 
mund, died; and the third, a Jew, named Isaak, was 
four years before he returned. He landed in October, 
801, on the Genoese coast, with the elephant; but 
the Alps being impassable on account of the snow, 
both the man and the animal wintered at Vercelli. 
In the summer they began their journey towards the 
Rhine; and so memorable was deemed to be the 
appearance of the first elephant ever seen in Ger¬ 
many, that some of the annalists note the day of 
his arrival at Aix-la-Chapelle, which was the 20th 
of July, 802; while others record the year of his 
death, 810; for in the summer of that year he sud¬ 
denly died at Lippe (Lippenheim). His name was 
Abulabaz (Pater devastationis, the Desolater, or 
the Monster potential). Yea, his fame spread into 


126 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

foreign lands; and the monk Decuil, who writes 
from Ireland , 825, notifies of him, appealing to the 
people of the Frankish monarchy as his witnesses, 
they having seen him in the Emperor Charlemagne’s 
time, that ‘‘the elephant, like the ox, lies down to 
repose, which Julius Solinus has denied.” 

This hubbub about the Pater devastations seems 
somewhat akin to the astoundment of the Sikhs on 
the arrival in the Punjab of the “ elephant ( q. d. 
the “ large dray-) horses” as a present from His 
Britannic Majesty William IV. to the Maha Baja 
Bunjeet Singh, in 1831, the crescented shoes of 
which, as the courtiers affirmed, by their brightness 
and size, when the horses’ feet were turned upwards, 
made the moon with envy turn pale. 

As return presents, Charlemagne sent to Harun 
many first-rate hunting dogs, fine linens, and other 
works of the loom, in which the Frankish and 
Frisian women greatly excelled. 

The OCULAR 
emplacement of 

CHABLE-] (HAEUN-UB- 

MAGNE ,i [ g 0 o RT,J * * * ‘ EASCHID, 

800, j ' ( 800, 



EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 127 

TABLE Y. 

the only three purely modern sovereigns who rise to 
the eye in large Roman capitals in Table V., is 
triangular ; Charlemagne and Hariin being seen, 
in Table V., spread left and right (westward and 
eastward) at the crosswise marginal date of 800; 
and Alfred , in 871, placed at the central triangular 
point below them. 

CHARLES THE GREAT was born in 742, being 107 
years before the birth of ALFRED THE GREAT, in 849. 
They are thus widely removed from being contem¬ 
poraries (indeed Egbert, the grandfather of Alfred, 
will readily be recollected as being the regnal asso¬ 
ciate of Charlemagne and of Harun); nevertheless 
they have a combinative affinity in time, which con¬ 
joins them in historic memory, viz.— 

They are the two sole LARGE ROMAN 
CAPITAL sovereigns that either Table V. or any 
other Table of modern time can exhibit to us as 
being now, in their respective countries, 

THE MONARCHS OF A THOUSAND 
YEARSI 

Charles, born 742, closed his eventful life in his 
72nd year, dying on the 28th of January, 814; 
while Alfred, born 849, and dying 901, attained but 
to the age of 52, being exactly the same age as our 
immortal Shakspere reached (born 1564, and dying, 
on his birth-day, 23rd April, 16 16 —Cervantes died 
in the same year, and on the same day , aged 67). 

And these two so memorable sovereigns have, 
within the first half of the present century, been 
called prominently up to memory again by the 


128 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

MILLENNIAL CELEBRATION, in Germany and in 
England , of the yet so well remembered and re¬ 
vered rule of the two first great monarchs of 
modern Europe. 

Had the Arab Empire continued to exist to the 
present century, HARUN-UR-RASGHID, who forms one 
of the tria?igular great triplicate of the large capital 
sovereigns who adorn, in Table V., the first great 
leaf of modem time, might have been added to 
the CHARLEMAGNE and ALFRED of a thousand years; 
and Harun would thus have been the (( Arabian 
Khalif of a thousand years” as well as the won¬ 
drous Bagdad “ Khalif of the 1001 Arabian Nights * 
Entertainme?its.” 

The Germans held their millennial commemora¬ 
tion, as I have elsewhere stated, on the 28th of 
January, 1814, thus dating from the day and year 
of their Charlemagne’s death ; while the millennial 
celebration of King Alfred’s memory, held in Eng¬ 
land on the 25th of October, 1849, was dated from 
the era of Alfred’s birth. It was held, too, at the 
place of his birth, viz. Wantage , in Berkshire. This 
meeting, which I had myself the satisfaction of at¬ 
tending, offered at least the charm of novelty and of 
uniqueness in the character of its chronological 
data; and it told, notwithstanding the meagre and 
unsatisfactory way in which the study of general 
history is but too often prosecuted amongst us, 
most favourably for the latent feeling in the country 
for historical revivals. 

One marked abatement, however, to the pleasure 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 129 

TABLE V. 

of this millennial meeting was as follows, viz. that 
while we dwelt largely and warmly on the virtues 
and valour of him who was at once the peaceful and 
the warrior king; while we heaped reverential and 
grateful praises on the embalmed memory of so 
great and good a monarch; a monarch who could, 
against such direful odds, by his 56 battles under 
the white horse banner, cripple and crush the ill- 
omened Danish raven’s wing; and who, amidst that 
fearful havoc and harassment of war in which he 
was so incessantly engaged, quitting the battle-field 
for the council board, could there sit down with equal 
calmness, clearness, and deliberative wisdom, to de¬ 
vise laws for the happiness and to secure the liberties 
of his people; and who could withal so assiduously 
apply himself to the encouragement of literature; 
making himself at once the rescuer of England from 
the Danish domination, and the great founder of our 
laws, our liberties, our literature, our commerce, and 
our navy; in fine, the founder of the grandeur, the 
glory, and welfare of England!—while thus, I say, 
we were calling, on this memorable occasion, for a 
loud All Hail! to the memory of our monarch of a 
thousand years—a loud All Hail! of honour, again 
and again, to the unparalleled and immortal Alfred! 
—when we turned to inquire of the inhabitants of 
Wantage for the ruins of the palace in which Alfred 

was bom. not one stone , alas! could be 

pointed to as indicating or verifying the almost 
sacred spot which once was Alfred's home! and 
where once the boyhood days of Alfred sped. 

G 3 



130 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

Is there no shame to Wantage—no shame to the 
families around it—no shame to Oxford , so near it, 
and so connected in its endowment with the memory 
of Alfred—no shame to the seven counties that 
touch upon Berkshire— no shame, in short, to all 
England —that thus has been left unheeded and 
unprotected all physical evidence of those walls 
within which one of the greatest and noblest of 
sovereigns first drew breath ? 

But if thus unworthily, at Wantage , have been 
neglected all means of preserving some coeval iden¬ 
tity of Alfred’s birth, what shall we find on turning 
to Winchester! his place of burial l for while 
Wantage had to boast of the birth of Alfred, 
Winchester had to witness his glorious manhood’s 
close. 

Reader! will you believe in the possibility of 
Alfred’s ashes— aye, ALFRED’S ashes! — being 
suffered to be covered with a common chain- 
clanking county bridewell! and within that very 
city, too, which once was his capital, and in the 
very midst of those ecclesiastical bodies which he 
had so richly and so splendidly endowed; and 
whose father, moreover, was that very Ethelwulf 
who, from the self-same city of Winchester, had 
promulgated the edict of 855? which so gorgeously 
provided the clergy of his day with tithes. 

Where, on this bridewell occasion, were the 
natural guardians of the illustrious dead ? Where 
were the Bishop, the Canons, the Dean and Chapter 
of Winchester, that all should have stood aloof 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 131 

TABLE V. 

from, or looked quiescently on, so rank a dese¬ 
cration ? 

If they could not themselves afford the paltry few 
hundreds that would have sufficed to save them¬ 
selves, and to save all England, from so foul a 
disgrace, could not the Crown have been petitioned 
to—could not the country have been appealed to— 
to save relics so revered from outrage so revolting ? 
to avert the blood-curdling indignity of beholding, 
in 1788, a bridewell arising, as a new sort of 
astounding Mausoleum , for so nationally sacred an 
entombment? while the so uniquely illustrious ashes 
which had previously reposed there were, to make 
room for felons, to he torn up and scattered, by 
dig and spade, from beneath the very altar table of 
the once so reverentially hallowed Hyde Abbey. 

The first to call attention to this monstrous pro¬ 
fanation, this county! insult to the nation, was 
Captain Henry Howard, of the 1st West York 
Militia, who, after having been quartered with his 
regiment at Winchester, addressed a letter, dated 
the 26th of February, 1798, to George Naylor, Esq., 
York Herald, E.A.S., extracts from which are as 
follow, viz.:— 

“ Dear Sir, 

“ The high veneration I feel for the character 
and principles of our renowned Alfred, led me, 
whilst we were quartered in Winchester last year, to 
make the discovery of his tomb an object of re¬ 
search. 


132 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

<f History informs us that Alfred and his Queen 
Alswitha were buried in the church of Newan- 
minster, which he founded and began, and which 
after his death was finished by Edward the Elder, 
who was also interred near his father. In the reign 
of Henry I. Newanminster was taken down, on ac¬ 
count of its being too near the cathedral church; 
and in the year 1112, that King, attended by the 
Bishop of Winchester and his whole Court, trans¬ 
lated with great pomp the body of Alfred to a tomb 
at the foot of the high altar of the magnificent 
abbey church, which he built for that purpose at a 
place called Hyde, near the walls of the city of 
Winchester; the body of Edward the Elder, and, I 
believe, also of the Queen, were removed at the 
same time. 

“ You will lament, with me, the failure of my re¬ 
searches, and feel some share of the same indigna¬ 
tion that I myself have felt, when I inform you that 
the ashes of the great Alfred, after having been 
scattered about by the rude hands of convicts, 
are now probably covered by a building erected 
for their confinement and punishment. And when 
you are told that this occurred so late as the year 
1788, and that no one in the neighbourhood, led 
either by curiosity or veneration for his remains, 
attempted to discover or rescue them from this 
ignoble fate, your surprise will not, I think, be less 
than my own.” 

* * * * 

“ The foundations of Hyde Abbey Church, for I 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 133 

TABLE V. 

am informed that little else remained of the struc¬ 
ture, were situated in an enclosure which is raised 
two feet above the level of the valley. In the year 
1787-8, this small field was purchased by the 
county, and in it they erected the new gaol or 
brideicell. 

“ About a ” [in the ground plan which Captain 
Howard furnishes] “ was found a stone coffin, cased 
with lead both within and without, and containing 
some bones and remains of garments. The lead 
in its decayed state sold for two guineas; the 
bones were thrown about, and the stone coffin 
broken into pieces. There were two other coffins, 
and no more, found in this part, which were also, 
for the sake of the garden in which they lay, broken 
and buried as low as the spring. At h” [in the 
plan sent] “ there were remains of a solid basis of 
masonry, and fragments of several small columns of 
Purbeck marble. Part of one of these I have ob¬ 
tained. It is ornamented in a spiral direction, with 
two animals coupled together on one side, and 
rudely-carved flowers on the other. May not this 
have been part of the high altar, or of the tomb of 
Alfred, near it ? Possibly the two other coffins con¬ 
tained the remains of Edward and of Queen Als- 
witha.” * * * “ On the whole the dimensions , as 
given to me by Mr. Page, the keeper of the bride¬ 
well, who is a very intelligent, and apparently accu¬ 
rate man, and of much respectability in his line of 
life, and who was the overseer of the prisoners and 
other workmen there employed during the whole 


134 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

time of the building of this gaol, the removing of 
the stones and rubbish, and the preparing of the 
garden, coincide with the dimensions left us by 
Leland in his account of this abbey.” 

# * * * 

“ I have the honour to remain, 

“ Dear Sir, 

“ Sincerely your obedient humble Servant, 
(Signed) “ Henry Howard. 

“ George Naylor, Esq., York Herald.” 

The following more amplified particulars are 
from the pen of the Rev. Dr. Milner, the able his¬ 
torian of Winchester, vol. ii. p. 222, et seq .:— 

“ The founder of this” [original Hyde] " abbey, 
in its former situation, was the Great Alfred. He 
had already built a convent for monks at Athelingay, 
the place of his retreat, whilst the Danish tyranny 
prevailed throughout this part of the kingdom; and 
another at Shaftsbury, for nuns, of which his 
daughter Ethelgiva became abbess. 

“ He had also assisted his religious Queen 
Eanswitha or Alswitha, in erecting and endowing 
her abbey of St. Mary, in this city, whither she re¬ 
tired on Alfred’s death; still, however, this pious 
monarch meditated another great work of this kind, 
viz. a royal monastery, in this his capital city, which 
might serve as a burying-place for himself and his 
family, and where the accustomed rites of religion 
might for ever be performed for them.” 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 135 

TABLE V. 

[Alas! for the disappointed aspirations of the 
Great Alfred here to repose in peace and honour , 
after his so toilsome, arduous, and courageous reign 
for the good of his people.] 

“ He only lived to begin this great work, which 
was finished by his son and successor, Edward the 
Elder, in 903, two years after the death of Alfred, 
when it was solemnly dedicated, by Archbishop 
Plegmund, in honour of the Holy Trinity, the 
Blessed Virgin, and St. Peter and St. Paul. 

“As soon as this ‘ Newan Mynstre,’ or ‘New 
Monastery,’ as it was called, occupying the whole 
north side of the f Ealden Mynstre,’ or ‘ Old Mo¬ 
nastery,’ as the cathedral was henceforward named, 
with some portions of the ground to the east of it, 
was completed (903), 

“ In conformity with the directions of the original 
founder, Alfred, his remains were translated hither 
from the cathedral, where they had been buried in 
the interim. In this same monastery were interred 
Alfred’s pious Queen Alswitha, though she had died 
at St. Mary’s Convent, of which she was abbess; his 
youngest son, Ethelward, who devoted himself to a 
studious life, and resided chiefly at Oxford; Edward 
the Elder himself; Alfred, son of the last men¬ 
tioned, who died in his non-age; Elfleda, and 
Ethelhilda, two of Edward the Elder’s daughters, 
the former of whom was Abbess of Hornsey, while 
the latter led an exemplary life in the world; King 
Edwy and the aforesaid St. Grimbald. It is plain 
from the uncommon number of stone coffins, and 


136 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

other marks of distinction found in the graves, 
which were lately opened amongst the ruins of 
Hyde Abbey, that these formed a small part of the 
illustrious personages who had been buried in this 
monastery in one or other of its situations.” 

* # # # 

“ The castle built by William the Conqueror at the 
west end of this city, with ditches admitting a branch 
of the river, occasioned so unwholesome a stagnation 
of water round the New Minster, that, however 
strong the attachment of the monks must neces¬ 
sarily have been to the walls and soil which had 
been given them by the Great Alfred, they began to 
look out for a new and more extensive situation, to 
which they might remove their monastery. 

“ There was, moreover, another very material in¬ 
convenience, and one, too, that had subsisted ever 
since the foundation of the abbey. Its church had 
been built parallel with the cathedral, and stood so 
near to it that the voices and organs of the two 
choirs mutually confounded and interrupted each 
other. 

“ For these reasons it became the general wish of 
both monasteries, and of the Bishop himself, who 
was William Giffard, that the later of these founda¬ 
tions might remove to some other place. The King ” 
[Henry I., 1100-35] “concurring in the same 
opinion, a magnificent church and monastery w r ere 
erected, chiefly at his expense, in Hyde Meadow.” 

* # * , * 

“ This work being completed, the monks of New 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 137 

TABLE Y. 

Minster left the situation which they had now occu¬ 
pied for more than two centuries (viz. from 903), 
and marched in solemn procession to their new 
abbey, carrying with them not only the relics of the 
saints, hut also the remains of the illustrious per¬ 
sonages that had rested in their old church, which 
they deposited in the new one now erected for them 
at Hyde. 

“ This event took place in 1110. The situation 
which had been abandoned was surrendered into the 
king’s hands, who transferred it to the Bishop, for 
the benefit of the cathedral monastery, to which it 
had originally belonged. 

“ In return, the King ” [Henry I.] “ granted 
various benefactions to the new abbey of Hyde, 
settling and confirming all the rights and privileges 
of the establishment. 

<£ The abbey thus founded and protected, no 
doubt the members of it flattered themselves with the 
prospect of long-continued peace and security. 
This, however, was not granted to them, for in the 
very next reign, that dreadful civil war breaking out 
between the Empress and King Stephen, which 
spent its first and most destructive fury upon our 
city, this royal abbey was burned to the ground, by 
the party of King Stephen, the fire which then con¬ 
sumed it having been enkindled at the north gate. 

“ The church and abbey of Hyde, however, were 
rebuilt with increased magnificence in the reign of 
Henry II., and it soon became one of the most dis¬ 
tinguished abbeys in the kingdom. Hence its 


138 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

superior was one of the 24 abbots, who, as soon as 
parliaments began to be held, were summoned to 
attend them in the upper house. 

“ Upon the dissolution of Hyde Abbey, many of 
its best estates, particularly the manors of Michel- 
dever and Stratton, were obtained by Henry Lord 
Wriothesley, afterwards Earl of Southampton, from 
whose family they passed, by marriage, to that of 
the Bussells, which was already gorged with church 
property. 

“ The site of the church and monastery was 
granted to Bichard Bethel, after the term of a lease 
made to the aforesaid Lord Wriothesley. What the 
intent of the lease was we may easily judge, viz. 
that he might have leisure to dispose of whatever 
was saleable on the premises. In conformity with 
this plan, he was in such haste to pull down the 
magnificent fabric, that Leland ” [dies 1552] “when 
he visited the city a very few years after, spoke of the 
abbey as of a fabric that had existed, but then ex¬ 
isted no longer.”* 

“ In Camden’s time” [1551-1623] “the ruins of 
it were still magnificent, but” [Dugdale, 1605-86] 
“the author of the ‘ Monasticon,’ complains, that 
when he wrote the very ruins of it had perished. It 
is plain that on the destruction of the church at the 
time above mentioned, the tombs of the illustrious 
dead which it contained were broken into; since 

* “ In this suberbe stoode the great Abbay of Hyde, and 
hath yet a ‘paroche church.’”— Leland's Itin ., vol. iii. 

p. 102. 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 139 

TABLE V. 

we are assured that two little tables of lead, in¬ 
scribed with the names of Alfred and his son Ed¬ 
ward, were found in the monument which contained 
their remains. What became of these we are not 
informed; most likely they were left among the 
ruins.” 

* * * 

“ The present age being unhappily no less dis¬ 
tinguished (such is the state of its morals) for the 
erection of gaols and bridewells, than many past 
ages have been for the building of churches and 
monasteries, amongst other sacred spots which have 
been chosen for these receptacles of guilt * has 
been the exact site of the most sacred part of 
Hyde Abbey , ?iamely, the church and choir . Thus 
miscreants couch amidst the ashes of our Alfreds 
and Edwards ; and where once religious silence 
and contemplation were only interrupted by the bell 
of regular observance and the chaunting of devo¬ 
tion, now alone resound the clank of the captive’s 
chain and the oaths of the profligate! 

“ In digging for the foundations of that mourn¬ 
ful edifice, at almost every stroke of the mattock or 
spade, some ancient sepulchre was violated, the 
venerable contents of which were treated with 

* “A gaol” [ANOTHER gaol! talk of Goths and Van¬ 
dals indeed! another GAOL! or pestilence of a bridewell!] 
“has also been erected upon the ruins of the famous 
ABBEY OF READING, the foundation and chosen 
burial-place of HENRY I.” [last of the house of Nor¬ 
mandy].— Milner's Winchester , vol. ii. p. 287. 


140 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

marked indignity *. On this occasion a great 
number of stone coffins were dug up, with a variety 
of other curious articles, such as chalices, patins, 
rings, buckles, the leather of shoes and boots, velvet 
and gold lace belonging to chasibles, and other 
vestments; as also the crook, rims, and joints of a 
beautiful crosier, double gilt. 

“ Nothing now remains of this magnificent 
edifice, once judged worthy to form a cathedral, ex¬ 
cept some ruinous outhouses, and a large barn, 
once probably the Abbot’s Hall, which seems to 
bespeak the workmanship of the 12th century.” 


I have gone into this subject at large, as well 
from my own daily-increasing admiration of the 
glorious character and the incomparable excellence 
of Alfred, as from my naturally-excited indignation 
against at once the perpetrators and the abettors 
negatively or actively, of this stigma upon English¬ 
men—this indelible brand on the face of all 
England. 

What should we say if we were, now, to behold a 
man coming down with a warrant from a bench of 
magistrates to some village church, perhaps in a 
state of decay, for the substitution on the identical 
site of the church, of a bridewell , and who should 
suffer the convicts, employed in digging a founda- 

t “The writer of this” [Rev. Dr. Milner] “was in some 
degree witness to the scene which he describes.” 



EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 141 

table v. 

tion for their future place of confinement, to break 
up the coffins, and to scatter, amidst jeers and jests, 
the revered ashes and hones of the villagers’ fore¬ 
fathers ? What should we say ? 

Why, that the whole of the villagers would rise 
up as one man, and if they did not massacre the 
wretch with the warrant, they would pursue him 
with hootings and execrations to the end of the 
world. 

And if the villagers did not so rise, why then I 
say that the whole country would rise to point at 
and hoot, and execrate the villagers. 

But no! not for the remains of villagers, hut 
for the remains of Alfred !—of all persons who had 
appeared on the earth—was reserved this crying in¬ 
sult, this perfectly insufferable indignity. 

As Wantage and Winchester to this day make no 
sign, show no stone, Alfred is yet at his birth-place 
and burial-place the monarch of no monuments ! 

If Wantage, his birth-place, neglects him, and if 
Winchester, his burial-place, once the metropolitan 
seat of his rule, so dishonours and outrages him, it 
doubly becomes the duty of the historian to ask for 
justice! to his memory. 

Wantage has to regret that so little pains have 
been bestowed to preserve some fitting memorial of 
the birth, and boyhood’s days, of our revered and 
renowned Alfred. She has deprived herself for ever 
of the proud dignity of having to show at least 
some remnant of the walls within which he first 
drew breath. But beyond neglect the country has 


142 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

nothing to reproach Wantage ’with; but Hampshire 
and Winchester have aroused the strongest feeling 
of national contempt, and have covered, themselves 
with everlasting national reproach. 

Attached as I am, and devoted as I long have 
been to historical study, I have, during no incon¬ 
siderable portion of my reflective life, been an 
anxious advocate to have some society formed for 
the preservation and perpetuation of the mo?iu- 
mental and inscriptional remains of our isles., in 
their exact and faithfully-maintained original form 
and wording . Since they thus give a sort of real 
life to the localities and personalities of Historic 
Time, and so much more vividly arrest and interest 
the mind than the mere dead-and-alive reading of 
printed hooks of history and biography. 

The case of Alfred affords a gigantic proof of the 
national want of some protective public body or 
widely-extended private association to prevent, in 
this age of the most puling saving, after the wildest 
extravagance, the further and final destruction of 
all those yet remaining memorials that give poetry 
to our isles, and poetry to human life. 

I hut too greatly dread, for I know that it was hut 
very recently contemplated, that Government , from 
motives of economy , may sell, and thus pervert to 
some homely purpose of bridewell (again), work- 
house, or mere building speculation, the all-beauteous 
Carisbroke Castle, in the Isle of Wight. The 
soothing and subduing effects produced by which, 
in a fine summers evening, partly by the sur- 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 143 

TABLE V. 

rounding and widely-stretching scenery, partly by 
the majestic grandeur of the picturesquely over¬ 
grown castle itself, and partly by the historical as¬ 
sociations , elicited by this so splendid remnant of 
the multiform ages long since sped, and sped for 
ever, are such as are not, and cannot, he purchased 
by any amount of money elsewhere. 

Then why not perpetuate that which we never 
can reproduce ? 

Twenty acres of land within its walls testify to 
the magnificent scale of its fortified enclosure. 

Historically we are reminded that on this won¬ 
drous site first was raised an ancient British mound , 
or fortification, being that on which now stands the 
keep of the castle; next, outside thereof, the Ro¬ 
mans, in their early (and by Vespasian, then second 
in command to Plautius,) conquered “ Vectis,” Isle 
of Wight, formed their beautiful encampment 
ground, afterwards used, by the Norman lords, for 
their Saracenic tournaments , and now graced by 
ladies’ archery meetings. So that here we come into 
historic contact at once with the Ancient Britons , 
the conquering Romans , the Norman lords, and 
the all-subduing archery belles of the present day. 

The springy turf of the fine broad ramparts 
makes a splendid walk of about three-quarters of a 
mile outside the walls and dry ditches. 

Excepting the well-known Heidelberg Castle, I 
know of no scene that ever so delightfully absorbed 
my mind as the Castle of Carisbroke. 

I may here, perhaps, not irrelevantly mention, as 


144 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

strengthening my argument for the organization 
of some protective agency to save our remaining 
historic mementos, that the discredit of neglecting 
our national monuments does not attach exclusively 
to England, hut may also be referred to Scotland; 
aye, to Scotland! albeit so nationally tenacious of 
every item of her national history, and so well pro¬ 
vided with long-organized literary and archaeological 
societies. 

Who would believe that the interesting, and to 
the royal mother once so anxious, state chamber, in 
which the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots was 
confined of the only child she ever bore, viz. James 
(I.), who was so romantically lowered in a basket 
from a window in the castle almost immediately 
after she gave him birth, was, until the intervention 
of an English officer, used and let out as a common 
canteen, or suttling, drinking, and smoking room for 
the private soldiers quartered in the castle. Again, 
at Dunfermline, no less than 14 royal personages 
(amongst whom the famous and popular Robert 
Bruce ) are reputed to be buried; but, says the 
" Stranger’s Companion to the Antiquities of Dun¬ 
fermline,” published by Messrs. Miller and Son, 
“ when visitors in search of the royal tombs ask, 
where are they ? echo answers, where ?—for not a 
stone tells where they lie.” No, not even the so 
historically remarkable Malcolm III. Canmore, the 
founder of Dunfermline , his favourite residence; 
the successor to Macbeth and the consort of Edgar 
Etheling’s sister Margaret, who expires four days 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 145 

TABLE Y. 

after the news of her husband’s death, while be¬ 
sieging Alnwick Castle, reaches her. Maude, too, 
or Mathilda, daughter of Malcolm III. and Mar¬ 
garet, marries Henry I., thus uniting the Saxon 
and Norman lines. It is, possibly, from this “ good 
Queen Maude,” a worthy daughter of her mother 
Margaret, and herself the mother of the Empress 
Mathilda, that Maude or Maud is one of the names 
bestowed on the Princess Alice, second daughter of 
her Majesty the Queen Victoria. 

But to return to our own Alfred: the inconsistency 
of mankind is strongly exemplied in the treatment 
of his remains. While the days and the deeds, the 
virtues and devoted heroism of the monarch of a 
thousand years are heralded forth with national 
exultation, how humiliating is the contrasted spec¬ 
tacle of his ashes being scattered by the rude and 
branded hand of the culprit! We can join in the 
expressed national exultation and in the praises of 
Alfred, because these seem to give unto us indi¬ 
vidually higher feeling, more elevated station; but 
where there is either the slightest trouble or smallest 
cost, then we stand aloof from the object of our 
homage, howsoever high that object may be. 
Trouble and expense we leave to others , we will 
have none of them ourselves. 

Our great Shakspere’s self-protective epitaph 
shows how perfectly that great master of all the 
feelings and failings of the human breast under¬ 
stood, and fore-felt, for what a small amount of 
gain or convenience, as is startlingly verified in the 

H 


146 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

case of the Hampshire magistrates of 1788, man¬ 
kind will violate the last sanctuary of man, and 
mock at the sad, hut, it may he, the soothing hope 
of the departing spirit, that the no-longer-tenanted 
body may thenceforth he left in honoured and un¬ 
disturbed rest. 

“ Good Frend for Jesvs’ Sake forheare 
To digg the dvst encloased heare 
Blesse he y e man y 4 spares thes Stones 
And cvrst be he y 4 moves my Bones.” 

But we now quit the subject which makes the 
mind tingle with mingled horror, sorrow, and shame. 
We leave the convict-broken coffins, the convict- 
scattered remains of our Alfred! of our Alfred’s 
queen ! and of our Alfred’s son and successor! and 
of others most dear unto them, to the contempla¬ 
tion of the Hampshire magistrates of 1788, and 
equally to the contemplation of the bishop and dig¬ 
nified clergy of Winchester of 1788, who will stand 
pilloried and pelted at throughout all coming time 
by the indignant spirit of the nation. 

And we return to the deeds and days when the 
now hovering spirit of Alfred above us yet ani¬ 
mated his (in Winchester) so cruelly and unrighte¬ 
ously treated ashes. 

Few words will suffice to reimpress the career of 
Alfred the Great, the brave, the good, and the wise. 
The foundation-piles of his fame are the foundation- 
piles of England’s unparalleled might and glory. 

First we behold him gallantly and signally turn- 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 147 

TABLE V. 

ing the tide of war against a fierce, a well-practised, 
and in every way most formidable foe, in the field 
of Ethandune, 878 , just ten years before the dis¬ 
ruption in 888 alike of the Frankish and the Sara¬ 
cenic monarchies, the two first great powers of 
Modem Time. 

So that coevally with the fragmental dissolution 
of the Frankish and Saracenic Empires, we repeat, 
was the rise and consolidation, through Alfred, of 
the Anglo-Saxon monarchy. 

1 . His fifty-six battles (for, with Alfred, going 
to battle was no more than going out to the chase 
in our day) ought to have afforded a better read 
lesson to the Ethelred II. of later time how to pay 
DANE-GELT. He swept from the west, the south, 
and the centre of his realm, that fierce and sturdy 
foe that had covered, and darkened, and disputed 
with him his kingdom, and against whom his elder 
brother and predecessor had fallen in battle at 
Merton, 871, limiting them to Northumbria and 
East Anglia. 

And if thus in offensive and strategetic warfare 
he shone as a star in the field of fame ! as a crown 
to his victories he founded or organized a new form 
of defensive warfare for his shores. To meet the 
enemy upon their own bold element, the waves, he 
himself created an infantine navy ; and he may 
thus be said to have first shown how the so-oft-dis- 
turbed British shores could alone be secured from 
hostile descent—how alone they could be ringed 
around with the defences of a thousand years. 

H 2 


J48 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

table y. 

Brave and subtle and skilled in warfare, alike 
for the recovery and for the defence of his realm, 
greater still, in such an age as his, rises Alfred, 

2 ndly, before us as the digestive selector and 
consolidator of laws. By laws not impracticable, 
incomprehensible, contradictory, and explanatory , 
with smothering enactments upon enactments, mak¬ 
ing confusion daily more confounded—but by laws 
wise, just, simple, and eminently fitted for his peo¬ 
ple—he laid the foundation of that equitable con¬ 
stitutional and judicial organization which, perhaps, 
has yielded a greater amount of real civil and 
political happiness than ever before was known in 
the world. 

And with such effect and energy did he enforce 
the laws once given, that a child with a purse of 
gold might ramble unharmed over his realm. 

But his laws had the benefit of that natural feel¬ 
ing of moral fitness, and that apt appreciation of 
the really good, that has ever so conspicuously 
characterized the Saxon race. 

3rdly. He was the first effectively to foster learn¬ 
ing ; he was the first to encourage an Anglo-Saxon 
literature , and thus the first to improve the lan¬ 
guage in which he daily spake or wrote; and he 
was himself one of the earliest translators of various 
valuable works from the Latin into Anglo-Saxon. 
In an age of pedantry he was no pedant. He 
wished not his subjects to write bad Latin but good 
Saxon. He wanted to introduce a taste not for an 
extraneous but a vernacular literature ; well know- 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 149 

TABLE V. 

ing that the power, the beauty, the music, and the 
charm of thought can alone be expressed, imbibed, 
and transmitted in a mother-tongue. He thus was 
the founder of that national literature, which, by 
the genius of a Shakspere, was lighted into a Halo 
of national glory (1564-1616)- Such are the 
great and sound and deeply-driven foundation-piles 
on which Alfred’s name and fame repose; and if 
time be the test of wisdom and power, Alfred’s are 
the institutions and monarchy, as well as the de¬ 
fences, of a thousand years ! 

And when we add, that all which we have thus 
rapidly adverted to was achieved between the age of 
22 and 52; and achieved, moreover, while suffering 
under an agonizing internal disease, which, from his 
20 th year, although it did not incapacitate him for 
the performance of any of his royal functions, tor¬ 
mented him so unremittingly as hardly to leave him 
an entire day’s exemption from misery during the 
remainder of his life—or, to quote the affecting lan¬ 
guage of his biographer, Asserius or Asker, who 
died about 910, ‘"if it ever was, through the mercy 
of God, withdrawn from him for a day or a night, 
or even a single hour, it would yet continue to make 
him wretched by the thought of the excruciating 
distress he would have to suffer when it returned”—• 
then I think the measure of our affectionate reve¬ 
rence, our grateful and sympathetic admiration for 
the heroically patient and resigned Alfred will be full! 

The following extract from Hume will show the 
tone in which philosophic history treats of Alfred, 
namely— 


150 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

“ The merit of this prince, both in private and 
public life, may, with advantage, be set in opposi¬ 
tion to that of any monarch, or citizen, which the 
annals of any age or any nation can present to us. 
He seems, indeed, to be the model of that perfect 
character which, under the name of a sage, or wise 
man, philosophers have been fond of delineating, 
rather as a fiction of their imagination than in hopes 
of ever seeing it really existing; so happily were all 
his virtues tempered together; so justly were they 
blended; and so powerfully did each prevent the 
other from exceeding its proper boundaries ! He 
knew how to reconcile the most enterprizing spirit 
with the coolest moderation; the most obstinate 
perseverance, with the easiest flexibility; the most 
severe justice, with the gentlest lenity ; the greatest 
vigour in commanding, with the most perfect affa¬ 
bility of deportment; the highest capacity and in¬ 
clination for science, with the most shining talents 
for action. His civil and military virtues are 
almost equally the objects of our admiration; ex¬ 
cepting only that the former, being more rare among 
princes, as well as most useful, seem chiefly to 
challenge our applause. Nature also, as if desirous 
that so bright a production of her skill should be 
set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him every 
bodily accomplishment—vigour of limbs, dignity of 
shape and air, with a pleasing, engaging, and open 
countenance.” 

Finally, on the 25th October, 1849, as we stood 
assembled each to render our share of humble and 
grateful homage to the memory of so uniquely 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 151 

TABLE V. 

great a sovereign, and at so uniquely distant a time, 
I could not help thinking that while we were un¬ 
shrouding his memory to re-embalm it with fresh 
incense, re-blessing his name, and re-heralding his 
fame; while we were re-contemplating, through the 
long vista of a thousand years, his deeds and his 
manifold merits and virtues, and mentally beholding 
him, from the Guildhall windows of his birthplace, 
Wantage, one day scouring the plains on his fleet- 
footed snow-white steed of Saxony, in pursuit of the 
discomfited foe and the tattered bird-of-prey banner, 
the black flag of the Baltic, and on the next day 
sitting in calm council for the maturing of his laws, 
or the securing of his coasts, or delighting himself in 
the peaceful bower of literature and science with his 
Asserius and other literary associates, as cheerfully 
as if no war were raging around him; how it would 
have exhilarated his noble heart and mind if, while 
we were looking backward through 1000 years, he, 
reversing time’s telescope, could, from his own day, 
have looked onwards for 1000 years—to behold 
the character and attributes of that Anglo-Saxon 
people, among whom he was the first to scatter the 
seeds of future grandeur; to behold the Anglo- 
Saxon race so greatly multiplying, spreading out 
the fair forms of the daughters of Anglo-Saxony 
like a silvery girdle encircling the earth; to hear the 
anvils of industry in our day unceasingly resound¬ 
ing ; to behold the realm to which he had given 
cohesion unlimited in power, unrivalled in its 
gigantic commerce and its marvellous maritime 


] 52 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

and colonial potency; to have beheld England’s 
flag of commerce and flag of war triumphantly 
carried into every quarter of the globe and to the 
very ends of the earth; to have beheld his laws ex¬ 
panding into the great constitutional forms of our 
realm; and, above all, to have beheld that rude 
Anglo-Saxon literature, which Alfred was the first 
protectingly and encouragingly to foster, rising 
to its SHAKSPEREAN era ! then, indeed, would all 
the sufferings, the toils, and sorrows of his hard- 
earned reign and fame have been at once, and for 
ever, amply soothed and compensated. If his ashes 
at Winchester were thereafter to be disturbed, his 
spirit, before quitting this world, would then, at 
least momentarily, have fore-tasted embalmed rest. 

The fact is, I believe, now so generally known as 
hardly to require being re-mentioned, that although 
Egbert held, virtually, from 827, sway over all the 
Saxon States of Britain, he never assumed the title 
of King of England : indeed, it was not, as we per¬ 
ceive by the columns of Tables Y. and VI., until 
about 100 years after Egbert’s death that all the 
scattered sovereignties of England, Banish as well 
as Saxon, were thoroughly united under one rule, and 
all the English crowns resting upon one head. 

The gallant Athelstan, the worthy grandson of 
Alfred the Great, was properly the first monarch of 
England, i. e. of the Banish as well as of the Saxon 
portions of it, and probably the first who would 
assume the title of King of England. Alfred the 
Great, at all events, we know designates himself, in 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 153 

TABLE Y. 

his will , not King of England, but simply, cf King 
of the West Saxons ” 

This is the famous will to which so many 
modern historians of high repute have most erro¬ 
neously and unwarrantably attributed the memorable 
words, that “ Every Englishman ought to be as 
free as his own thoughts! ” a sentiment in noble 
keeping with the great character of Alfred, but 
which might, with much greater truth, have been 
ascribed to Alfred’s heart than to his testament: for 
in his will the words are certainly not to be found, 
or at least not in that sole authenticated copy of his 
will, which is preserved in Dulwich College, near 
London; a fact which greatly disconcerted and 
mortified the late patriotic Major Cartwright, when 
he went down to Dulwich College purposely to 
feast his eyes on the very words. He, however, as 
soon as he recovered from his first disappointment 
and chagrin, exclaimed (with certainly greater love 
of liberty than of historic accuracy), as the late 
Mr. Allen, Master of Dulwich College, informed 
me, “ Well! no matter! since the sentiment is so 
good in itself, and has been believed in so long, 
the best thing we can do, I think, is to let the belief 
of it go on as before! ” 

It was, however, never very historically rational 
to attribute to the will of so wise a sovereign words 
so very unsuitable to the time in which he ruled. 
Words which, in fact, could have conveyed nothing 
more than an empty sound of rhetoric to the mind 
when the labours of husbandry were chiefly per¬ 
il 3 


154 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

formed by acknowledged slaves, and when slave - 
selling in the Anglo-Saxon fairs and markets (for 
export as well as for home use) was quite as com¬ 
mon as the buying and selling of horses, at present, 
in the fairs and markets of Yorkshire. 

The export of slaves from Bristol to Ireland was 
very considerable down to as late a period as the 
Norman Conquest, in 1066, that is, about 165 years 
after Alfred’s death in 901. Boys and girls, of the 
finest forms and tenderest years, are represented as 
having been fastened together in rows when ex¬ 
hibited for sale in the markets. 

And with regard to the legalized slavery of 
nearly all the peasantry of England, who, possess¬ 
ing nothing in the shape of property of their own, 
subsisted solely upon what it was the will of their 
masters to bestow upon them, it will be unnecessary 
for me to remind you that it remained in force 
about 600 years after Alfred’s death, namely, until 
the reign of Henry VII. (1485-1509) ; and that in 
the reign of Edward III., 1327-77, one of our 
most heroic and popular kings, an Act was passed 
directing a large letter to be burnt on the forehead 
of every bondsman or slave who had escaped from 
his master. 

All this, I think, is quite enough to show how 
entirely misplaced and anachronistic would have been 
any showy phrase about universal liberty, if inserted 
in Alfred’s will. 

We have already treated of the difficulty of ascer¬ 
taining when, properly, the title of King of Eng- 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 155 

TABLE V. 

land was first assumed. But infinitely greater, 
perhaps, would be the difficulty of finding out when 
the name itself of England became first generally 
applied to our island. Indeed, when it first came 
into use I know of no means whatever of satisfac¬ 
torily determining. But how it came into use I 
have hazarded a conjecture near the top of the 
Saxon columns on the reverse of Table V. 

The various JEnglian tribes of the Saxons, whose 
parent settlement, if they had any settled residence, 
is supposed to have been northward of the Elbe, 
and elbowing the Jutes, whose territory (adjoining 
Holstein) is still called Jute- land, possessed them¬ 
selves by degrees of nearly the whole line of the 
most projecting or bulging part of our eastern 
coast. The communication most frequent from the 
opposite Frisian or Saxon shores would naturally, 
as most convenient, be, therefore, with the Anglian 
or eastern coast. 

-And thus the visitants of those shores would 
gradually become habituated to say that they had 
been making, or were about to make, voyages, not 
to Britain or the land of the Britons, but to the 
/EN G LI AN land, or the land of their Saxon brethren, 
the JEngelen , or the, in Latin, so-called Angli. 

The Saxon plural for the Anglians is written 
JEnglen or JEngln; the diphthong rendering the 
pronunciation ^/nglen. If then we add land, we 
have Eng-len-land; and from Eng-len-land, we 
have, by dropping the central len, a very easy and 
natural contraction into our present Eng-land . 


J 56 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

This is the way which occurs to me to account 
for the weaker clans of the Anglians having given 
their absorbent name to the whole land in preference 
to any of the other branches of Saxon settlers, par¬ 
ticularly the West Saxons, by whom, subsequently, 
all the Anglian tribes were subjugated. 

To substantiate my hypothesis, that the name of 
England originated, or was first generally applied, 
from without our country, I may quote the example 
of the French, who call all Germany Allemagne , 
from their most frequent collision or communication 
having been with the Swabian border, in which 
were situated the Allemanni. 

And it is very probable that we should ourselves, 
from a similar cause, namely, from the Saxons 
being nearest to our own shores, have applied the 
general name of Saxons to all the different Ger¬ 
manic tribes or nations, had we not, from the Latin, 
become habituated to call them Germans. 

Holland, although but one province of the Bata¬ 
vian Republic, has, from being commercially the 
best situated, and the most frequented, as well as the 
most generally known to foreign nations in the 
struggle for Batavian liberty, swallowed up the names 
of all the other provinces, in the same manner that, 
at the other extremity of the Rhine (for the Rhi?ie 
has the standard of freedom upreared at its foun¬ 
tain, as well as unfurled where it meets with the 
waves of the ocean), the little canton of Schwyz, or 
of the Schweitzers , has given its name of Schwyzer- 
land to the whole Helvetic territory. Again, the 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 157 

TABLE V. 

Arabs of Africa now know Spain, not by the name 
of Spain or Hispania, but by the appellation of 
“ Andaloos” because Andalusia is the province, or 
part, of Spain most proximate to Africa, and the 
Andalusian Port of Cadiz the most familiarly 
known to the African traders. 

So that it appears that the province, people, or 
district that has become (no matter from what 
cause) most known to foreigners is that which is 
most likely for them to adopt as a designation for 
the whole country to which such district or people 
may belong; and that nations do thus oftener, I 
repeat, acquire their names, or general appellations, 
from without their own country than from within. 

As corroborative of the belief that a considerable 
portion of the Saxon settlers in Britain had a com¬ 
mon tribal origin with the present occupiers of 
Holstein, or that the Angles did issue from the 
spot assigned to them there, we may quote the fact 
that the division of lands or fields (by means of 
quick-thorn hedges or otherwise) in a similar man¬ 
ner to the division of lands prevalent throughout 
England, is nowhere to be seen on the Continent 
but in Holstein, if we except Bretagne or Britany, 
where the long-continued intercourse and intimacy 
with our own island might easily have induced to a 
resemblant practice. 

Table V., which, in its European columns, I 
have thus copiously surveyed, on account of its 
being the first Table of Modern Time , I shall 
conclude by a sketch of the most brilliant column 


158 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

of the whole of that introductory table to modern 
history, namely, the Arabian, or Saracenic, which 
we shall thus synchronistically associate in memory 
with the European changes and characteristics to 
which we have already directed the reader's marked 
attention, and which will he found, in itself, and 
independently of the extraordinary interest otherwise 
connected with Table V., to present us, in tho very 
first great leaf of modern time, with more memo¬ 
rable subject-matter, with a revolution more unfore¬ 
seen and more wonderful in its character than any 
of the revolutions we have passed over in the four 
great pages of Ancient Time. 

We now turn from the western regions of the 
old Roman rule to those portions of the earth which 
were, in part, comprised in their eastern sway; to 
that tract of the earth which, lying between the bor¬ 
ders of the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, 
and banks of the Indus, has so much more often 
than our own European region been swept over by 
great and memorable revolutions : thrice within the 
period of written records, and within the columns 
of antiquity, as we l^ave already set forth, has the 
political surface of these districts been completely 
changed— 

1st, by the Persians, under Cyrus ; 

2ndly, by the Macedonians, under Alexander; 

3rdly, by the Roman rule; 

and this, independently of the minor revolutions 
among the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Medes, 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 159 

TABLE V. 

some of which, in their day, were deemed of no 
inconsiderable magnitude. 

But still more wonderful and more attractive to 
our attention are the universal monarchies, which, 
in modern time, properly so called, have been 
stretched over the same geographical division. And 
it is worthy of your attention (as I shall hereafter 
have occasion more particularly to point out), that 
the first of the mighty, or • so-called universal, 
monarchies of modern time is partly identified in 
local origin with the earliest of the recorded uni¬ 
versal monarchies of antiquity. 

For while the first Persian Empire of antiquity 
arose out of a partly sandy and partly mountainous, 
or rocky, region eastward and northward of the Per¬ 
sian Gulf, the first great empire of modern time, viz. 
the Saracenic, or Arabian, was erected by the wan¬ 
derers over the geographically-contiguous regions 
southward and westward of the same Persian Gulf 
—out of a region which stretches itself north¬ 
westward to the head of the Red Sea, and nearly 
touches the Mediterranean; south-eastward points, 
in nearly a direct line, to Bombay, and south-west¬ 
ward narrows itself to a fashionably-peaked point, 
at the Strait of Babel-mandel, as, indeed, nearly 
all other southern extremities of the earth do, 
especially in India, Africa, and America. 

This geographical position brought the Arab 
frontier, eastward, into contact with the Parthian 
or New-Persian Empire of the Sassanides, 
while it equally, northward and westward, brought 


160 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

it into contact with the EAST ROMAN EMPIRE, 
having its capital at Constantinople; and which, 
at the period of Justinian’s death, 565 (being but 
five years before the birth of Muhammad, in 570, 
and three years before the irruption of the Longo- 
hards into Northern Italy, in 568), having, through 
Justinian’s generals, Belisarius and Narses, effected 
the conquest of the African kingdom of the Vandals, 
as well as of the whole of Ostro-Gothic Italy and 
Sicily and the whole southern coast of Spain, had 
become possessed of a considerably wider range of 
territory than had ever acknowledged its sway before 
the Western empire was broken up, and thus wore 
towards Arabia a more overpowering aspect than it 
had ever before assumed. 

The Parthians, too, had lost none of that martial 
fame and prowess which had enabled them to meet 
and overthrow the Roman armies when Rome was 
in the meridian of her mighty power: Orodes 
slaughtering Crassus and his legions, in 53, and 
Phraates IV. overthrowing Antony, in 35 before 
Christ: two dates, by the bye, which we shall not 
fail to perceive will enable us, by merely transpos¬ 
ing or reversing the two figures of each date, viz. 

into 35, or 3)5^ into 53, to establish a mnemo- 
nical hold upon both these achievements of the 
Parthian arms. 

Although thus immediately contiguous to and 
hemmed in between the two powerful empires, which 
alone had withstood the shock of the great migration ; 
and which alone, as will be seen by their two (red and 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 161 

TABLE V. 

brown pink) colourings being alone carried up to 
the very top of their column headings, in Table V., 
had crossed the great boundary line, in 476 
after Christ, out of ancient, continuously, into 
modern time ; and although, of course, equally 
contiguous to the anterior empires of Cyrus, of 
Alexander, of the Ptolemies, and the Seleucidse, 
and, above all, to the united empire of Home,—the 
Arabs had never, down to the era of Muhammad, 
properly been subjected to any foreign sway; for, 
although they submitted to the arms of Augustus 
and Trajan, these submissions were of short dura¬ 
tion ; and although, about the year 502 after 
Christ, the Happy Arabia, or Yemen, was subju¬ 
gated by the Ethiopians, from beyond the Red 
Sea; and again, 574, by the Persians from beyond 
the Gulf of Persia, the largest portion of Arabia 
continued free. Thus, externally , Arabia may be 
said to the remotest ages to have been free; and, 
internally , she had equally refused, down to the 
era of Muhammad, to acknowledge any one per¬ 
manent political head—the natives of Arabia sub¬ 
mitting, in larger or smaller clanships, hordes, or 
tribes, to the rule alone of their immediate shekhs 
and amirs. Many of these might cordially unite for 
temporary purposes of aggressive enterprise or 
warlike defence, but as soon as these temporary 
purposes were accomplished, their union also was 
dissolved, and they returned to their former rela¬ 
tions, to their family, or tribal chiefs. 

The surface or soil of Arabia is unequally divided 


162 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

into the Happy, the Stony, and the Sandy. But by 
far the largest portion is the Sandy; and equally 
varied with the soil were the avocations and the 
degrees of culture among the inhabitants of Arabia. 
Bor while some were the professional promoters and 
the regular carriers of commerce, by means of that 
wonderfully useful animal the camel, the ship of 
the desert, as it is emphatically styled, others were 
the habitual impeders of commerce, or the pirates 
of the desert, who would either seize or levy tribute 
upon every caravan (or fleet of the desert) that had 
not with it a warlike convoy sufficient for its own 
defence; two combinations of character attaching 
(by the way) no exclusive disgrace to the Arabs as 
a people. For the same combinations of character, 
while in the same stage of social existence , are 
observable everywhere on the earth, whether we look 
towards Europe, Asia, or elsewhere. In India, up to 
the latest period where there has existed the power, 
there has been exercised the practice of imposing 
an arbitrary and capricious ransom, or duty; or, in 
case of demur or denial of payment, a positive 
seizure of merchandize in its transit from one 
country towards another. And in Europe, in the 
early modem period, during how many centuries 
were not the twofold characters of merchants and 
pirates united by the inhabitants of the shores of 
the Baltic. And for what, but to curb the incessant 
depredations, or exorbitant and excessive (arbitrary) 
impositions of the castellated chieftains of Europe, 
were the great commercial leagues of the Hanse 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 163 

TABLE Y. 

and the Rhenish cities formed, so late even as the 
13th century after Christ? 

If the avocations of the Arabs were thus varied, 
certainly not less discrepant, as already remarked, 
were the degrees of mental culture or approximation 
towards civilization that were to he witnessed 
among them. For while some of the Arabs were 
contending for literary glory—for the inscription of 
their prize poems in letters of gold at the annual 
poetical competitions, held in the Occadh during 
the great religious festivals at Mecca (and which 
strikingly remind us of the Olympic Festivals 
among the Greeks)—others of the Arabs were yet 
in such a state of ultra ferocity, that we read from 
Gibbon, while speaking of the siege of Constan¬ 
tinople by the Yisi- Goths, which immediately 
followed the great defeat of the Romans at Adria- 
nople, in which the Emperor Yalens perished, 
378 after Christ, that a vigorous and successful 
sally having been made by a party of Arabs, who 
had been engaged as auxiliaries in the service of 
Valens, “ A Gothic soldier was slain by the dagger 
of an Arab, and the hairy, naked savage, applying 
his lips to the wound, expressed a horrid delight 
while he sucked the blood of his vanquished enemy.” 

And between these extremes we may picture to 
ourselves an infinite variety of gradational shades, 
such as would naturally be perceptible to every 
observant traveller who should now traverse Africa 
or aboriginal America, the two regions which offer 
the most capacious fields for the study of savage 


164 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

life. Among the Arabs, however, generally we may 
readily suppose, that as conspicuously predominant 
as the Sandy and Rocky over the Happy surface, 
fragrant with its spices and perfumes, was the waste 
or wilderness of the human mind over the spots of 
mental verdure. And here it is essential for us to 
remark (for we shall thus be assisted in obtaining 
an insight into the causes which lead to that un¬ 
equal distribution of civility and knowledge on the 
earth to which -tfe adverted in our introductory 
section),—it will here, I say, be essential for us to 
remark, that, labouring as they did under such 
adverse peculiarities of locality, mankind were, in 
Arabia, precluded from becoming wholly settled in 
husbandry. 

They had, indeed, become sedentary in those 
narrow districts which partially admitted of their 
becoming so, but in the remainder of the mostly 
desert region which they inhabited, covering, in all, 
nearly five times as much surface as the whole of 
present Germany, and stretching, between its extreme 
points, about 1400 miles in length and 1200 miles 
in breadth,—the Arabs, I say, being precluded, over 
nearly all this region, from settling as husbandmen, 
were compelled to linger in the less advanced stage 
toward civilization of herdsmen, and, at the same, 
time (as naturally concomitant upon such a stage 
of existence), as hunters and predatory warriors. 

Being thus compelled to linger at a particular 
stage of social advancement, they would probably 
present, at the era of Muhammad, a faithful pic? 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 165 

TABLE V. 

ture of the manners and habits which prevailed in 
the same wilds in the days of Abraham, which is 
ascending nearly to the heads of our highest 
columns of recorded history, or to about 2000 
years before Christ. 

And if the manners and habits of the wandering 
Arab had undergone so little change during the 
long period of 2622 years which preceded the era 
of Muhammad, so neither are they likely to have 
exhibited any very striking change, even since the 
era of Muhammad, or since 622 after Christ. For 
although these deserts have poured forth the armies 
which have erected and overwhelmed mighty mo¬ 
narchies, those who thus went forth did not return 
so as to influence any general revolution in the 
manners of the desert, which deserts would be 
gradually repeopled from those left behind, and new 
generations would grow up in the desert under the 
same unpropitious influences which had so impera¬ 
tively held down each succeeding generation of 
their ancestry to one and the same stage of social 
advancement. And thus unchangeably primitive, 
too, will have continued the habits and character of 
life in the monster desert of Northern Africa , known 
as the Sahara , the wildest and most widely-ex- 
tended desert of the earth, being about 1500 miles 
in length and 980 in medium breadth. Further, the 
Arabs, before the days of Muhammad, had not, 
properly, any national cohesion among themselves ; 
they had felt and obeyed the physical necessity 
which seemed to forbid them to erect, upon their 
own soil, at least, any permanent structure of social 


166 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

magnificence, and they had continued as politically 
uncemented into any permanent union as the sands 
of their desert; and being thus internally not 
only uncemented into any union, hut even hostilely 
dissevered into numberless predatory and mutually- 
hostile hands, they were, externally, not only re¬ 
garded as powerless, hut might even be looked 
down upon, from the proud portals of the great 
empires which overshadowed them, as politically in¬ 
significant, or, indeed, wholly contemptible. Such 
then, from time immemorial, had been the general 
condition of those who, in the seventh century after 
Christ, were destined to become terrible to so many 
nations of the earth under the well-known name of 
Saracens ! What properly is the signification of a 
term which has so long and so familiarly been in 
use, the learned, I believe, have been very much 
divided to determine; many affirming it to mean 
men or people of the East , in which sense it was 
first applied, as it is said, by the nations who 
dwelt northward and north -westward of the Arabs. 

And if such had been ascertained to he the true 
derivation of the term, there would have been this 
peculiarity attaching to it, namely, that, while at 
one point they had acquired the appellation of men 
of the East, from another quarter, and at an earlier 
date, they had gained the designation of men or 
people of the West —for such is the signification of 
the word Arab , first applied by the Chaldeans, 
whose country was situated north-eastward of those 
districts from which the Arabs approached Chaldea. 
I Others, again, derive the epithet Saracens from 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 167 

TABLE V. 

a contracted expression signifying men of the sad¬ 
dle : but amidst all the varying, and widely-discre¬ 
pant, derivations assigned to this word, perhaps the 
easiest and most accurate solution will be found in 
the Arabic Zah ra, signifying desert, plain, or 
waste ; and, indeed, the same word we find, under a 
different orthography, applied by geographers to 
that immense tract of sandy waste in Africa, to 
which we have just adverted, universally known 
under the appellation of the Sahara , or Great Desert. 
And we might further add, if any further observa¬ 
tion on the subject were needed, that this deriva¬ 
tion possesses an additional claim to our credit, 
since the term men of the desert would carry 
with it somewhat of that reproachful or scornful 
meaning which is not unlikely to have been pointed 
against those who, from their unsettled and pre¬ 
datory habits, may he supposed to have been teas¬ 
ing and irritating neighbours. 

While speaking of etymologies connected with 
that portion of the globe which we are historically 
considering, there is one (of commercial origin, I 
believe) to which one can hardly help adverting—I 
mean the derivation of the word Levant. One hears 
of the Levant trade, of the Levantine silks, and of 
vessels sailing to and from the Levant; hut if one 
goes to one’s maps, even the accurate and elaborate 
maps of Mr. John Arrowsmith himself, we can no¬ 
where find the Levant—it utterly Levants out of 
our sight: and when one comes to make some 
verbal inquiry about the matter, instead of turning 


168 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

out, at last, to be auywhere in the East Indies, or 
in China, as one might reasonably suppose it would, 
it turns out to mean simply the eastern ends of the 
Mediterranean. It is certainly obvious enough 
that the Levant applies to the Levant du Soleil, 
and might, perhaps, not be wholly inappropriate or 
inadmissible, with those inhabiting either Greece, 
the Spanish, the Lower Italian, or some of the 
Erench ports, bordering on, or situated in, the 
Mediterranean, westward of Turkish Asia; but 
when we look at our own situation at Scarborough, 
for example, on the north-eastern coast of England, 
we shall perceive that the Levant to us is Holstein 
and Jutland, the Baltic, or the mouths of the Eyder 
and Elbe, rather than the furthermost shores of the 
Mediterranean, in Asia-Minor and Syria; and to all 
the countries eastward of Smyrna, the western 
shores of Asia-Minor would be not to the “le¬ 
vant ” but to the “ couchant ” side “ du Soleil.” 
So that, to us, the adopted Erench w r ord Levant 
appears both vague and inappropriate, and in lieu 
of it there can be no objection to using some more 
definite geographical expression. 

We shall now go directly onwards to that period 
in which the Arab or Saracen history begins to 
assume entirely new historical features, and those, 
too, of so remarkable and striking a character, as 
must inevitably arrest the attention of every reflect¬ 
ing human being. 

The first person who draws our attention in the 
new era of Arab history, is that historically extra- 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 169 

TABLE Y. 

ordinary character whom we know more generally 
by his epithet than by his proper name—for, in like 
manner that the Divine Founder of our own religion 
is hardly ever otherwise spoken of or written of 
than as Christos (or Christ), a Greek word signify¬ 
ing the Anointed; or as Jesus, another word of 
Greek derivation, signifying Saviour —so the re¬ 
former of the faith of the Arabs and the breaker up 
of their previous idolatrous worship, is most gene¬ 
rally, if not exclusively, known by the epithet of 
Muhammad, signifying “ the Glorified.” 

Muhammad sprang from the tribe or clan of 
Koraish, noted, at once, as hfeing the most illus¬ 
trious in their descent, and as speaking the purest 
dialect among the Arabs ; they were the princes of 
Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the Kaaba, 
or sacred temple, of the Arabs, to which, at stated 
periods, pilgrimages were performed by most of the 
Arab tribes: the Koraishes ruled, however, as the 
heads of a republic, like Pericles in Athens, or the 
Medici in Florence, rather than as absolute sove¬ 
reigns ; and in their hereditary ecclesiastical charac¬ 
ter they bore an affinity to the tribe of the Levites 
among the Jews. That branch of the Koraishes 
(for the family of Koraish was divided into branch 
clans or tribes) to which Muhammad belonged bore 
the family name of Hashem. 

Hashem, the great -grandfather of Muhammad, 
was remembered as having munificently relieved the 
distress of Mecca during a season of threatened 
famine. 


i 


170 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

And Abdol Motalleb, the son of the generous 
Hasbem (and of course the grandfather of Muham¬ 
mad), was equally renowned for his successful 
defence of Mecca, 568, against the Ethiopian in¬ 
vaders, or Abyssinian Christians, who had subjected 
the greater part of the kingdom of Yemen, or 
Arabia Felix. 

The gallant Abdol Motalleb, the grandfather of 
Muhammad, had thirteen sons, but the best beloved 
of these was Abdallah, who was esteemed the most 
beautiful and most modest of the Arabian youth. 
Abdallah was married to Amina, of the noble race 
of the Zahrites, and Muhammad, the only offspring 
of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca about 
570, being about five years, as already stated, after 
the death of the Emperor Justinian, in 565, and 
two years after the Abyssinians had been re¬ 
pulsed at Mecca, 568, by his grandfather. In 
his early infancy Muhammad was deprived by 
death of his grandfather, his father, and his 
mother: and his numerous and powerful uncles, 
in the inheritance which they assigned to him, 
reduced him to the possession of but five camels and 
an Ethiopian female slave. Thus situated, he, being 
of independent mind, turning his attention to com¬ 
merce, twice accompanied those caravans which, 
under the protection of the Koraish, made regular 
annual journeys into Syria, thus acquiring much 
knowledge of, and tact in the treatment of, mankind; 
and having approved himself a faithful servant to 
the rich and noble Cadijah, a widow of Mecca, he 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 171 

TABLE V. 

was rewarded with her hand and fortune in marriage; 
and thus restored to wealth and consequence, he 
had now leisure for the indulgence of those contem¬ 
plative habits to which it would appear that he was 
constitutionally prone, for he had been distinguished 
by them from his early youth. And the result of 
his private mediations was—that he at last came 
forward as the public and declared reformer of the 
idolatrous religion of his forefathers; preaching to 
the Arab people, especially in their annual great 
Congregating at Mecca, with glowing and fervid 
eloquence, that there is hut one Eternal and Almighty 
Ruler of the universe; and that he himself is the 
prophet, or apostle, of God, sent to declare this 
truth and overturn the idols of the Kaaba. 

That a promulgation of sweeping reform, thus 
eloquent and hold, should arouse the attention of 
the people will be easily conceived, and no less 
easy is it to conceive that it would equally excite 
the rancorous indignation of the Koraishes , who, as 
the hereditary keepers of the idolatrous temple of 
Mecca, were the first who were likely to be sensibly 
touched by the proposed religious reformation, and 
were of course not backward in their attempts to 
silence Muhammad, by pursuing him and his fol¬ 
lowers with that species of exasperated violence 
which was well calculated to arouse in his favour the 
still greater attention, and still warmer sympathy, of 
the people; for thus much we seem justified in say¬ 
ing in favour of human nature, viz. that the people 
of almost every nation, when guided by their 

i 2 


172 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

natural impulse, like the free Arabs, are ever ready 
to stand by and succour the weakest! But Mu¬ 
hammad’s branch of Hashem was in itself so power¬ 
ful, that the rest of the Koraish tribes, although they 
persecuted as far as they dared, were for many years 
compelled to temporize. The preaching of Muham¬ 
mad at Mecca began in the year 609, and it was 
not until the year 622, or 13 years later than 609, 
that he no longer found himself able, under the 
shelter of his own family, to brave the vengeance of 
the other branches of the tribe of Koraish. On the 
death of Abu Taleb , the most affectionate and re¬ 
spectable of Muhammad’s uncles, Abu Sophian, 
the chief of the branch of Ommia, succeeded to 
the principality of the republic of Mecca. Ahu 
Sophian, a bigoted votary of the idols, and an im¬ 
placable foe to the line of Hashem, convened a 
secret assembly of the other Koraislies, in which it 
was determined that Muhammad should perish; and 
in order to elude or render hopeless the vengeance of 
the Hashemites, each family of the conspirators was 
to plunge a sword into the heart of the Prophet. 

Muhammad, however, having obtained timely in¬ 
telligence of the danger which threatened him, 
effected a perilous flight to Yatreb, about 200 miles 
from the rival city of Mecca [Jedda, 74 miles 
distant, is the sea-port of Mecca]. And this for¬ 
tunate escape, in 622 after Christ, is commemo¬ 
rated as the general era of the Muhammadan 
religion, under the name of the HEJIRA, a word 
signifying FLIGHT. At this era of 622, Chlotaire 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 173 

TABLE V. 

II. was the sole king of the Franks; Ethelbert , 
the first Anglo-Saxon sovereign who adopted Chris¬ 
tianity , and who introduced laws , was the king 
of Kent. In Yatreb (which thenceforth was called 
Medina, or the city , meaning the city of the 
Prophet) Muhammad had already so many converts 
and friends, that, from the period of his escape 
thither, he not only assumed all the prerogatives of 
an ecclesiastical pontiff, hut the exercise of the regal 
authority of a temporal sovereign. And such was 
the rapid success with which he established his au¬ 
thority in this twofold character (to which, by the 
way, he was, as already stated, even by birth fully 
entitled to aspire), that he speedily became, partly 
by the vigour of his arms, and partly by the per¬ 
suasion of his irresistible eloquence as an enthu¬ 
siastic preacher, the temporal and spiritual ruler 
over nearly the whole of Arabia. Within ten years 
from the era of the flight, for he died in 632, he had 
achieved the total uprooting of a faith which had 
been revered by the Arabs from time immemorial, 
and he had besides achieved the no less difficult 
task of bringing into submission and moulding into 
a substantial union the whole of the jarring and 
dissevered wanderers of Arabia. He had collected 
and given consistency to the scattered elements, the 
previously-discord ant atoms, of Arabia’s future 
glory. And in the meanwhile “ the Kura'n,” or 
“ the book,” with which they were to go forth to 
reclaim other nations from erroneous faith, was 
already in preparation ; for his disciples had re- 


174 HISTORIC MEMORY - . 

TABLE V. 

corded on palm leaves, and on the blade-bones of 
mutton, all that they could catch of the substance of 
his ecclesiastical effusions. But these fragments or 
pages were thrown, without order or connection, 
into a sacred repository or chest, until, two years 
after the death of Muhammad, the sacred volume 
was collated or arranged, and, published by his 
friend and successor, Abu Birr; and this work, 
having subsequently been revised by the Khalif 
Othman, has ever since maintained a uniform text, 
the substance of which is contained in an English 
translation of the Kuran, by Mr. Sale . 

The chapters on the omnipotency of the Deity 
are, I believe, esteemed to he among the most suc¬ 
cessful examples of Muhammad’s eloquence and 
literary genius. 

The Sunna , or oral law, is a sacred compilation 
of about 200 years’ later date than the Kurdn ; it 
is a discriminative collection into one written body, 
by A1 Bochari, of the innumerable sayings and 
doings of the Prophet Muhammad, which had been 
preserved by tradition, and gradually so increased in 
transmission, that it at length became necessary to 
reduce them to more reasonable compass; for all 
these traditions were reverenced by the people more 
or less as guides for the conduct of life, and hence 
the necessity for compiling, at last, all those of the 
traditions which were deemed genuine, or which it 
was thought prudent to accept as genuine, into one 
written body or consecrated volume, and then finally 
to reject or disallow all the rest as apocryphal. 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 175 

TABLE Y. 

The Sunna led to the great schism of the Shiahs 
and Sunnites. 

When the internal submission to Muhammad’s 
power had been fully effected, the next difficult step 
was, how to inspire his new subjects and followers 
with sufficient boldness to assail those bordering 
and mighty empires which had hitherto seemed to 
wear walls of brass against the impotent arms of the 
Arabs. But in his quality of general, I speak not 
of Muhammad as a mere tactician, for a mere tacti¬ 
cian, even of the ablest cast, is hut a man of wood 
or straw, when compared with one possessing those 
higher and nobler (those Nelson-like) attributes of 
the great commander, with which Muhammad ap¬ 
pears to have been so eminently gifted, namely, the 
ability to inspire his troops with an irresistible self- 
confidence, to infuse into the bosom of all around 
him his own glowing and enthusiastic valour; to 
arouse, combine, direct, and turn upon his enemies, 
like a sword of fire , the very passions (as well as 
cooler manual powers) of those whom he desires to 
carry onwards to victory; for, after all, it is the 
spirit of the operative warrior which gains the 
triumph. 

Terrible is the shout of battle of those amidst 
whom the spirit of martial and national glory has 
once been thoroughly breathed; and such a spirit 
dies not with the leader from whom it has been im¬ 
bibed, for though his body may have disappeared, 
his soul will seem to be yet long afterwards alive 
among his followers. 


176 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

So effectually had Muhammad , as a warrior, 
known liow to call forth and combine every hidden 
energy of the Arab’s inmost nature, and so irresist¬ 
ibly to propel it against surrounding nations, that 
although he himself accompanied his troops but on 
one. external or foreign expedition, viz. into Syria 
(and died in 632, while a second campaign was pre¬ 
paring), he had already so effectually set the car of 
victory in motion, that it never afterwards stood 
still until the fairest portions of the earth were 
stretched in subjection at the Arabs’ feet, until the 
Arabs had erected one of the widest-spreading uni¬ 
versal monarchies ever known in the annals of 
time. 

For Muhammad’s troops drew not hit in their 
career of conquest, until the Arab Jerreed had been 
hurled alike into the heart of France and into the 
skirts of India; until, in Europe, they had sub¬ 
jected Spain, Sicily, and we may add lower Italy, 
and stood alike before the gates of Constantinople and 
the gates of Eome; and until, in short, they had, 
alike on the banks of the Indus and on the banks 
of the Rhone and the Loire, proclaimed the simple 
unity of God (and the honour of his militant apostle 
Muhammad). 

Such, indeed, was the enthusiastic and reckless 
energy with which, after they had once tasted of 
victory, the Arabs poured themselves forth, that 
speedily after Muhammad’s death we find them not 
contented with assailing one of the mighty monar¬ 
chies, which had so long looked down upon them 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 177 

TABLE V. 

with disdain, hut attacking, and with equal vigour, 
the other empire also, striking home at once at the 
Persian as well as the Roman, and entering in the 
very same year (viz. 637), which was hut five years 
after Muhammad’s death, Ctesiphon, the capital 
of Persia, and Jerusalem, the well-known capital 
of Palestine, that capital which has so often ex¬ 
perienced a change in its temporal sovereign and its 
state religion. 

The Arab, in detail, in his track of victory, his 
road of triumph, we cannot follow; the nature of 
this publication does not admit of it. But we 
can readily convey an idea of the rapidity with 
which these mounted missionaries, these conquerors 
for heaven, as well as for earth, these gatherers up 
at one thrust of crowns temporal and crowns 
eternal (doing business this, with a vengeance), not 
merely overrun, hut substantially secured the sove¬ 
reignty over (a distinction, which in measuring the 
success of the Arabs it is material to remember) 
regions of first-rate magnitude and of primary poli¬ 
tical importance—a rapidity which left the assailed 
but little time for aying and naying, or arguing the 
matter with the new creedsmen and new rulers, for 
the lightning of the Arab’s scimitar was often felt 
gleaming over the heads of the conquered before 
they had even heard the thunder of the mounted 
warrior’s hoof. 

In the ten years of the reign or administration of 
the Khalif Omar (who followed Abu Bi/cr, the im¬ 
mediate successor of Muhammad, and which Abu 

i 3 


178 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. . 

Bikr survived Muhammad o?ily two years), the 
Arabs reduced to his obedience thirty-six thousand 
cities or castles, destroyed four thousand churches 
or temples of the “ unbelievers,” and erected four¬ 
teen hundred mosques for the exercise of the Mu¬ 
hammadan faith. Between 635 and 651, or within 
the compass of sixteen years , the Arabs had totally 
and finally reduced into tranquil subjection that 
wide sovereignty which, first under the name of the 
Parthian, and subsequently of the A>m>-Persian 
Empire, had, during hundreds upon hundreds of 
years, scoffed at the terror of the Roman name, 
and effectually resisted the whole weight of the 
Boman power. And if the rapid subjection of 
Persia present a striking memorial of the military 
genius and energy of the Arabs in the very early 
period of their career in the east, the rapid reduc¬ 
tion of mountainous Spain 60 years later has left 
an equally memorable evincement of their extra¬ 
ordinary martial prowess in the west. For Spain, 
which, in a far more savage and disorderly state, had 
resisted the Romans during 200 years, was over¬ 
whelmed in about eleven months by the Arabs, 
under Tarik and Musa. Connected with the Arab 
subjection of Persia, we remark this striking cir¬ 
cumstance, viz. that after his defeats, and the sack 
of Ctesiphon, his capital, 637-651, Yazdijird III., 
the last of the house of Sassan, and the last ruler of 
Persia who professed the religion of ZOROASTER, 
fled to those very mountains of Farsistdn, from 
wdiich CYRUS, the great founder of the first 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 179 

TABLE y. 

Persian monarchy, had descended about twelve hun¬ 
dred years before . 

Numerous fugitive Persians, or PARS EES, hearing 
with them the thenceforth scattered FAITH OF 
ZOROASTER, are driven by sea [to Bombay] and by 
land INTO INDIA; ’t is thus that mankind get scat¬ 
tered over the earth. 

Recapitulatively we may rehearse in memory, that 
Muhammad was born 570, being five years after the 
death of Justinian 565, and two years after the 
irruption of the Longobards into Upper Italy, 568; 
that he began preaching at Mecca 609 (being hut 
nine years later than the promulgation of Chris¬ 
tianity to our Saxon forefathers in Britain, by Austin 
and 40 other monks, in 600), Muhammad being then 
39 years old; at the era of the Hejira, 622, he was 
52 (the same age as Alfred and Shakspere when 
they died); and at the period of his death, ten years 
later, he was 62. Further, that the conquering 
Arabs, who had entered Ctesiphon and Jerusalem as 
early as 637, had, by 732, pushed their conquests 
eastward beyond the Indus to Gujerat, as well as to 
the Hydaspes and to Kashmir; and westward, after 
conquering all Spain, they had carried their arms to 
the hanks of the Loire in the very heart of the 
Frankish monarchy. 

In contemplating the conquests of the Saracens 
or Arabs we have a modern exemplification upon a 
broad scale of that absorbency of name which so 
often accompanies the victorious tribe or nation. 
The inhabitants of the extensive southern and eastern 


180 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

shores of the Mediterranean had long been proud to 
assume and make a parade of the name of Romans; 
and by this appellation they would be most gene¬ 
rally known to the nations around them. Next, as 
being subjected to the Khalifs, they were all in¬ 
cluded under the general national denomination of 
Saracens; and thirdly, they have ceased to he 
Saracens, and have now, nationally , all become 
Turks. 

The word KHALIF, signifying simply successor 
(i. e. successor to the Prophet), was assumed by such 
as succeeded (at first electively) to the exercise of 
the supreme temporal and spiritual dominion which 
Muhammad had founded as the most sacred and 
honourable of all earthly titles. And with regard 
to the earliest Khalifs we note this singularity, that, 
although at the head of an essentially military and 
so very recently founded an empire, they very seldom 
indeed were seen in the field with their conquering 
armies, they being mostly occupied in their ecclesi¬ 
astical duties or in the administration of civil jus¬ 
tice. The laws of the Arabs, as we may here ob¬ 
serve, being for the most part founded on the com¬ 
mon principles of the understanding , readily and 
durably maintained their influence. While the 
Khalifs were thus employed, they entrusted to their 
valiant generals the rapid extension of their empire; 
and among these generals in the early annals and 
great battles of the empire, we find Khaled , signifi¬ 
cantly meaning the “ sword of God” a conspicuous 
character, who might worthily be compared to the 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 181 

TABLE V. 

ever-energetic and danger-defying General Picton of 
our own day. 

The extreme or ultra simplicity of the Khalifs of 
Medina , of the earliest date, contrasts finely with 
the extreme splendour of the Khalifs of Damascus 
and of Bagdad in subsequent days. In the articles 
of capitulation, framed hy the inhabitants of Jeru¬ 
salem, it was stipulated that the Khalif Omar should 
himself be present when possession was taken of the 
city, as a security for the more faithful observance 
of the articles; and Omars triumphal journey to 
the captured city is thus described in Gibbon:— 
“ The conqueror of Persia and of Syria was mounted 
on a red camel, which carried, besides his person, a 
hag of corn, a bag of dates, a wooden dish, and a 
leathern bottle of water. Wherever he halted, the 
company, without distinction, was invited to partake 
of his homely fare, and the repast was consecrated 
hy the prayer and exhortation of the Commander of 
the Faithful.” 

With a similar absence of all attempt at show or 
parade, we find him, on his arrival before Jerusalem, 
“ pitching his tent of coarse hair, and calmly seat¬ 
ing himself on the ground,” “ and after ratifying 
the capitulation, he enters the city without fear or 
precaution, and courteously falls into a discourse 
with the patriarch on the religious antiquities of the 
city.” This simplicity of the year 637, I repeat, 
offers a striking contrast to those later and even 
rapidly-declining days of the empire, in which we 
read of the splendour of the sacred Cassar, castle, 


182 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

or palace, which, in the form of a vast half-moon, 
reflected itself in the limpid water of the Tigris, 
flowing beneath its walls, in the capital of Bagdad. 

Days in which we read of the 38,000 pieces of 
tapestry (12,500 of these being of silk, embroidered 
with gold) hung up in this palace, and of the 
22,000 carpets, or resting cushions, on its floors 
—of the tree of gold and silver spreading into 
eighteen large branches, on which, as well as on the 
lesser boughs, sat a variety of birds of the same 
precious metals, as were also the leaves of the tree ; 
and which tree, by machinery, affected spontaneous 
motion, wafting coolness through the apartment by 
its oscillatory leaves and branches, the several birds 
warbling the while their natural melodies. From 
this sacred palace there would, on state occasions, 
issue forth a hundred lions, with each its keeper. 

Barges and boats, with the most superb decora¬ 
tions, would he seen floating on the Tigris; 160,000 
men, horse and foot, would he under arms. The 
numerous state officers and favourites of the Khalif 
would he seen near him in the most splendid ap¬ 
parel, their belts glittering with gems and gojd; and 
near these again would he placed 7000 state servants 
or footmen—4000 white and 3000 black. Indeed, 
the door-keepers alone of the sacred palace are 
stated to have amounted to 700. 

Such, then, was the extreme simplicity with which 
the first, and such the extreme splendour with which 
the last of the Saracen dynasties exercised their 
ecclesiastical and regal sway. Such were the humble 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 183 

TABLE V. 

Peters, and such the superb pontiffs, of the Muham¬ 
madan faith. 

The era of simplicity was the period of conquest; 
the era of splendour was the day of decay. 

The earliest and most national seat of the Arab 
Empire was at Medina, and there, that which we 
may call the elective dynasty of the successors to 
Muhammad, viz .Abu Bikr, Omar, Othman , and Ali, 
were stationed 28 years. 2ndly, after the tumultuary 
election of Ali, and the still more bloody accession 
of the first hereditary dynasty, viz. the house of 
Ommia or Moawiyah, the seat of rule was removed 
to Damascus ; for this house, against which there was 
much popular excitement in and around Medina, 
found it prudent to abandon Arabia as the seat of 
dominion, and adopt a capital in the midst of its 
warmest supporters, the Syrians. 

3rdly. When the house of Ommia was over¬ 
thrown by the house of Abbas, in 749, such was 
the deadly hatred to the memory and rule of the 
Ommiades, that Damascus was discarded and the 
city of BAGDAD founded, in 762, on the river Tigris, 
about 15 miles above Ctesiphon, the ruined capital 
of the New-Persian monarchy ; and Bagdad con¬ 
tinued to be the seat of empire until its destruction 
by the Moguls, in 1258, or during about 496 years, 
the rule of the Abhassides lasting in all, from 749, 
during 509 years. The three dynasties, too, are 
distinguished by different colours as well as capitals: 
green being appropriated to the first dynasty, and 
further, in particular, to the family of Ali, the 


184 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

nearest of all in blood (through his marriage with 
the Prophet’s daughter Fatima) to Muhammad; 
white to the house of Ommia; blacky the opposite 
of the hated white of the Ommiades, to the house 
of Abhas, as indicated in Table V. by the respective 
colouring streaks typifying the badges, banners, tur¬ 
bans, and scarfs of the three several dynasties. The 
accession of the house of Ommia, as the first here¬ 
ditary dynasty, affords a memorable example of the 
unforeseen turns in the affairs of human life; for 
Moawiyah, the grandson of Ommia, was the son 
of that very Abu Sophian who was at the head of 
the conspiracy for the destruction of Muhammad. 

And thus the fortunate escape of the intended 
victim led to the chief conspirator’s family being 
raised to the most splendid and powerful temporal 
throne of its day; and, moreover, the very son of 
that man who was the most zealous upholder of the 
idol worship of the Kaaba (dreading probably that 
the downfall of the idols would be accompanied by 
the downfall of his own family power, profits, and 
dignity) finds himself, through the triumphant 
destruction of the Arab idolatry, exercising a con¬ 
siderably more potent ecclesiastical jurisdiction than 
even the mightiest among the Gregories of Rome. 

In the person of Abul Abbas , of the family of 
Hashem, Muhammad’s branch of the Koraish line 
was restored. It was under the first , or elective 
dynasty, that the great conquest of Persia was 
effected. And under Moawiyah, the first sovereign 
of the house of Ommia (and the first founder of 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 185 

TABLE V. 

an hereditary dynasty of Saracen Khalifs), that a 
navy was created, Constantinople first besieged, and 
with difficulty saved by the Greek Fire, Sicily 
successfully invaded, and the Arab conquests carried 
along the shores of Africa to the Atlantic. 

It was under the Khalif Walid I., of the house 
of Ommia, too, that Spain was subjugated by his 
generals, Tarik and Musa, who, in their warlike 
successes and varied fortunes of life, somewhat re¬ 
mind us of the Belisarius and Narses of the Em¬ 
peror Justinian’s reign. As connected with some 
proud recollections in our own warrior annals, and 
with our now only remaining stronghold on the conti¬ 
nent of Europe, we may re-mention that the intrench- 
ments of Tarik's camp, on the European Pillar of 
Hercules, or extreme south-western rock of Europe, 
formed the first rude outline of the present fortifica¬ 
tions of Gibraltar, a word which still corruptly com¬ 
memorates the earliest fortified position of the Arab 
general Tarik, and which properly (as “ Gebel ” or 
“ Gibl al Tarik ”) signifies the “ Alock of Tarik!’ 
Einally, it was during the rule of this house that a 
very considerable portion of the territory comprised 
in modern France was subdued, and the remainder 
with difficulty saved in the hard-fought battle of 
Tours, by Charles Martel, in which the Arab 
general-in-chief, Abd-ur-Rahman, perished, 732, 
just one hundred years after the death of Muham¬ 
mad, 632. 

But the most splendid sovereigns of the Saracens 
were of the race of Abbas, as well as, ultimately, 


186 


HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 


the most unhappy; for this race, which created the 
golden era of the Saracen Empire, also witnessed its 
decline and fall. And especially to this dynasty, 
for their emulative and munificent patronage of 
learning, posterity owes a debt of gratitude to which 
neither of the other dynasties can put forth any 
claim. A1 Mansur, of this house, had the merit of 
introducing a taste for , and A1 Ma-mun of carrying 
to the highest pitch the protection of ‘ science and 
learning. But not less renowned than these two 
already-named sovereigns of the house of Abbas, is 
the famous Tik^Jj^-ur-Raschid (the father of A1 
Mamun), who is well known in European history 
as having negotiated, and, as already mentioned in 
another portion of this work, exchanged presents 
(among which, from Harun, was a clepsydra , or 
water-clock, one of the earliest time-measurers seen 
in modern Europe,) with Charlemagne, and whose 
memory is moreover graced with an everlastingly 
popular celebrity as the perpetual hero of the 1001 
Nights’ Arabian Tales. 

Under the Ommiades was the era of arms; under 
the Abbassides was the era of arts and literature. 
The house of Abbas it was that trimmed the lamp 
which, during the extinct light of Europe, the Arab 
schools kept burning. 

The first or elective dynasty (at Medina) existed 
only 28 years, dating from the death of Muhammad, 
632, to the year 660; the Ommiades (at Damas¬ 
cus) ruled from 660 to 749, or during a period of 
89 years; and the Abbassides, during 509 years, from 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 187 

TABLE V. 

749 (at Bagdad from 762), as long as the Asian 
Khalifs continued to exercise any sovereignty, or 
to spin out a fallen, and, during many centuries, 
merely nominal regnal existence, viz. to 1258, when 
the Spiritual Khalifat was removed into Egypt. 

Glancing across our first Table of Modern Time 
for general synchronistic recollections, we shall 
perceive and note, . as strongholds for our Arab 
memory, 1st, that there is hut a difference of 4 
years between the accession of the first sovereign 
of the Carlovingian dynasty over the Franks, and 
the accession of the Saracenic house of Abbas; for 
the first of the house of Abbas, Abul Abbas , accedes 
749, and reigns to 753 ; while the first Carlovingian, 
Pepin the Short , the little Napoleon of his day, 
accedes 752, the year before Ahul Abbas’s death, 
and reigns to 768. 

2 ndly, That Charlemagne, the son and suc¬ 
cessor of Pepin the Short, accedes 768, and dies 
814—1001 years before the battle of Waterloo, 
1815 ; thus ruling 46 years, while his celebrated 
cotemporary, Harun-ur-Raschid, the fifth Khalif 
of the house of Abbas, acceding 786, and dying 
in 8o8> reigns but 22 years; his reign being of 
24 years shorter duration than Charlemagne’s. 

Brdly, That in the year 800, Charlemagne has the 
long-dormant title of the Roman Emperor (in the 
West) revived in his favour; that Egbert, in the 
same year, 800, ascends the throne of Wessex; and 
that Harun-ur-Raschid, who does not die until 808 , 
is, in the year 800, reigning in all his glory; 


188 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

finally, that at this period the pope, in Italy, is 
becoming a confirmed temporal soyereign. We can 
thus repose the memory, for safety, in recalling the 
most flourishing era of the Saracens on no less than 
four great points of European history, viz. Egbert’s 
acquiring a crown, Charlemagne a new title, the 
Pope a good substantial footing of land, and Venice 
assuming the name which it still bears. We further 
repeat, that the struggles and weakening divisions, 
both in the Frankish and Saracenic monarchies, 
with which Table V. closes, will identify themselves 
in time with Alfred’s severe struggles against the 
Danes, out of which, however, he at length success¬ 
fully emerges. 

' From the Franks it was that the Arabs sustained 
their first terrible European shock of war, at Tours, 
on the banks of the Loire, 732; and with the 
Franks it was (in the age of Charlemagne and 
Harun-ur-Raschid) that they first joined hands in 
friendship. And hence it probably is, that, with 
the Saracens to this day, all Europeans, whether 
English, French, Germans, Italians, Danes, or 
Dutchmen, are known only under the indiscriminate 
appellation of Franks . We, too, equally, in the 
Crusades, gave the misnomer of Saracens / to our 
adversaries, the Turks , both belligerents in the 
Crusades thus curiously miscalling each other. 

Among the new features and historical recollec¬ 
tions which the Saracen conquests in Europe have 
most strongly impressed (and which at the same time 
most readily recur to the memory) are the quoting 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 189 

TABLE Y. 

of proverbs, the invention of romances, the intro¬ 
duction of tournaments , and, if not too humble to 
claim a mention, the practice of fortune-telling. 
But as of graver importance we may mention the 
introduction of the Arabic figures , or cyphers, 
much valuable instruction and information in geo¬ 
graphy and astronomy, in chemistry and medicine ; 
and, although the Arabs brought with them that 
direful disease, the small-pox, which had been intro¬ 
duced among them from Africa, they also were the 
first who studied how properly to treat it. The 
Arabs were, besides, the authors of many improve¬ 
ments in arts and manufactures. 

Long before the time of Charlemagne they had 
instructed the Franks in the art of weaving, and 
had introduced into Europe many eastern vege¬ 
tables ; and they, throughout their whole empire, 
had established communications by means of letter 
posts 700 years earlier than posts were established 
in France. The various words, as Al manack, Al 
Gebra (from Geber the astronomer), Al cohol , Al 
chymy, Azimuth, Zenith, Nadir, and many others, 
especially as terms in chemistry (which is itself 
derived from the Arabic word Jcema), still in use 
with Europeans, constitute a sort of permanent 
homage which our literature and science render to 
the superior knowledge of the Arabs at the era of 
the celebrated schools of Bagdad, Bassora, Cufa, 
and Alexandria, and the no less celebrated schools 
of Spain, which flourished coevally with the most 
melancholy ages of European darkness. 


190 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

There is even much reason to believe, that from 
the Saracens the Italians derived their earliest 
knowledge of the compass, which was, however, 
doubtless, greatly improved by the Italians, and 
especially by Flavius Gioja , of Amalfi, in the com¬ 
mencement of the 14th century. The Arabs, like 
the earlier Greeks and Homans, attained, at one 
and the same time, to the meridian glory of their 
literature and the meridian splendour of their em¬ 
pire. And the rapidity with which the Arabs swung 
themselves mentally up to a high station in science 
and literature is scarcely less remarkable than the 
rapidity with which they effected their manual con¬ 
quests of the sword. 

On this subject I cannot forbear to quote a fine 
parallel which has been drawn by the German his¬ 
torian John von Muller:— 

“ Should I attempt,” says he, “ to compare the 
simple manners of Charles the Great with the 
splendour of the Sultan of a thousand and one 
nights; the stedfastness of the Frankish warrior 
with the fire of the Arab; the tedious progress by 
which we emerged from barbarism with the sudden 
apparition of a new faith, a universal empire, a 
refined civilization, among the hordes of the desert; 
it would be to draw a parallel between the under¬ 
standing and the imagination. We behold, on one 
side, the lofty flight of souls which are elevated by 
a phantom above the apparent bounds of possi¬ 
bility ; we see the fire which animated them gradu¬ 
ally diminish, from time to time break forth again, 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 191 

TABLE V. 

but finally lose itself in its primitive obscurity : on 
the other side, we observe the slower development 
of reason, stedfast in its exertions, assailed by a 
thousand errors and passions, strengthening itself 
by imperceptible degrees, and at length evolving a 
blaze of light, which imparts, at the same time, 
the power of effecting greater things, and of calcu¬ 
lating the utmost possible attainments of the human 
faculties.” 

In architecture it will, of course, be remembered, 
that the Arabs were the founders of that style 
which we m?s-term Gothic , because our ancestors 
became acquainted with it in the Visi-Gothic por¬ 
tion of Spain, but which is in reality Saracenic. 
“ It gives,” says v. Muller, “ that expression of 
boldness and extravagance which seems peculiar to 
the Oriental people. Nature is never vast enough 
for them. The Grecian beauty is too tame for their 
imagination, which demands something gigantic, 
mysterious, and emblematical.” 

On the egregious mal-adaptation of this style to 
the ecclesiastical edifices of our own island and,cli¬ 
mate, Smollett makes the following pungent obser¬ 
vations :—“ Those British architects who adopted 
this style do not seem to have considered the pro¬ 
priety of their adoption. The climate of the coun¬ 
try possessed by the Moors *, or Saracens, both in 
Africa and Spain, was so exceedingly hot and dry 

* [A misnomer not unfrequently to be met with, which 
has arisen from the Saracens having entered Spain from 
Mauritania , or the country of the Moors.] 


192 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

that those who built places of worship for the multi¬ 
tude, employed their talents in contriving edifices 
that should be cool; and for this purpose, nothing 
coulfl be better adapted than those buildings—vast, 
narrow, dark, and lofty, impervious to the sunbeams, 
and having little communication with the scorched 
external atmosphere; hut ever affording a refreshing 
coolness, like subterranean cellars in the heat of 
summer, or natural caverns in the bowels of huge 
mountains. 

“ But nothing could he more preposterous than 
to imitate such a mode of architecture in a country 
like England, where the climate is cold and the air 
eternally loaded with vapours; and where, of conse¬ 
quence, the builders intention should he to keep the 
people warm and dry.” 

And we have here (as it may not he amiss 
to observe) a pretty safe clue to the time in which 
our edifices of this order were introduced; or, 
at all events, we have a pretty decided evidence 
that it is quite extravagant to ascribe them to such 
early date as some have wildly been disposed to 
affix to them. In the first place, we ought to re¬ 
collect that Christianity was not attempted to be 
preached or introduced among the Saxons of Bri¬ 
tain before about the year 600 after Christ—and 
next, that the Saracens did not conquer Spain 
before the year 711—and that, therefore, this style 
could not have been learnt, if we assume even the 
very earliest possible, or probable, day, sooner than 
about the middle, or towards the latter end, of the 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 193 

TABLE Y. 

8 th century, by any other European nation from 
Spain; and it would, most likely, only gradually and 
slowly find its way to our shores, from that part of 
southern France which was so Jong occupied by the 
Saracens having their seat of rule at Narbonne. 

If Smollett, as we have already quoted, be thus 
disposed to find fault with the want of architectural 
discretion in our earlier ancestry, we are certainly 
not disposed to be very favourably impressed with 
the historical discretion of our later ancestry—for 
it would seem an extraordinary piece of contradic¬ 
tion to have rejected the rebuilding of St. Pauls, 
in London, on the beautiful Greek model proposed 
by Sir Christophen Wren, solely on the score of its 
being tinctured with a Pagan origin—while, at the 
same time, all the other cathedrals of our country 
are more or less identified, in their model, with the 
architecture of those very Muhammadan Saracens 
who were long the most fierce and formidable adver¬ 
saries of the Christian world; for the Saracens looked 
upon the Christians—who were the strenuous up¬ 
holders, in Asia , of image and picture worship—as 
not one jot less impiously idolatrous than the wor¬ 
shippers of pagods in India—nay, not being able to 
comprehend the sublime mystery of the Trinity in 
Unity, they conceived that, besides pictures, and sta¬ 
tues, and saints, and the Christian goddess , as they 
esteemed the Virgin Mary, the Christians wor¬ 
shipped a plurality of supreme deities; thus they 
looked upon every principle of the Christian faith 
as offensive in the highest degree to the sole Creator 


104 


HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 


and sole Supreme Euler of the Universe. Our 
prejudices against the Jews being thus completely 
outdone hy the Saracenic, and, later, Muhammadan- 
Turkish scorn of the unclean “ Christian Dogs.” 

To discover a purely Christian architecture would 
he almost as curious as to discover a set of purely 
“ Christian names; ” our Christian names .being, 
self-contradictingly, mostly Jewish ones, as “Ra¬ 
chel,” Hebrew for a “ sheep ; ” “ Rebecca ,” Hebrew 
for “ fat and full“ Sarah” signifying “ dame,” 
or “ mistress; ” “ Hagar,” “ a stranger; ” “ Mary,” 
“ bitter; ” “ Dinah,” “ judgment; ” “ Hannah,” 

“ gracious;” “ Judith” “ praising“ Susannah 
“a lily;” “Elizabeth” “God hath sworn,” and 
“Leah” “painful;” with the equally familiar and 
choice Christian male names of Enoch, Job, 
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Benjamin, Aaron, 
Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Jesse, Jonathan, David, 
Hezekiali, Josiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, Nathaniel, 
Simon, John, Matthew, Michael, Matthias, and 
numerous others, all unmistakably of Hebrew or 
Jewish origin. 

And these Hebrew names being all epithetical, 
like “ the big buck,” “ the little wolf,” “ the watch¬ 
ing fox,” “ the foremost in battle,” “ the bad hawk,” 
“ the little otter,” “ the black wolf,” “ the playing 
fox,” “bears oil,” and other similar aboriginal and 
epithetical names of America in the present day, 
are seldom appropriate to the character or per¬ 
sonal attributes of those on whom they are adopt¬ 
ively and baptismally conferred: for instance. 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 195 

TABLE Y. 

“ Sarah ” might oftener be a “ maid” than a “ mis¬ 
tress;” “ Mary,” “bitter,” might sometimes he 
very “ sweet;” “ Susannah,” “a lily,” might not 
always he very fair; “ Rebecca,” “ fat and full,” 
might he rather “ lean; ” and “ Leah,” “ painful,” 
might be very “ pleasant: ” “Job,” too, instead of 
being “ patient,” as the name imports, might he a 
most “ irritable ” man. 

Before quitting the subject of architecture, one 
cannot help remarking that it really is somewhat 
singular that no modern European nation should 
ever successfully have attempted to introduce an 
architectural style of its own, hut that the utmost 
perfection down to this day to which any architect 
in Europe has aspired, is to be ever the slavish imi¬ 
tator, by rule and line, of the Greek, or Roman, or 
Saracenic model. 

It has sometimes been said of individuals among 
the dead, that if they could revisit their domestic cir¬ 
cles, how surprised they would be at the changes 
which had there taken place. And we may certainly, 
with greater force and less invidiously, apply the 
same remark to departed nations. If the Romans, 
who celebrated the millennial duration of Rome in 
the year 248 after Christ, and who would then feel 
triumphantly assured that the Roman power could 
never be shaken or overturned; if they could ha^> 
looked up in the year 476, or but about two cen¬ 
turies and a quarter later than 248;—nay, if those 
rulers of the West, who flourished in the 4th cen- 

k 2 


196 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

tury, could have looked up in the 5th, they would 
have found the whole Roman power of the West 
finally swept from the earth, and not even a frag¬ 
ment of their so-oft victorious eagle-standard any¬ 
where raised as a rallying point throughout the 
whole extent of their former western rule. And, in 
like manner, how would the Romans of the East 
(who had a codicil of existence after the main 
parchment and great seal of the Roman power had 
been rent and broken, and who having, through 
Belisarius and Narses, recovered so much power and 
reconquered such ample dominion, that, from Justi¬ 
nian’s reign, the Roman authority seemed again to 
be firmly and gigantically upreared), how would 
they have been astounded to have arisen one century 
later than Justinian’s rule, and then beheld the 
despised stragglers of the desert quietly and care¬ 
lessly seated in supreme political and pontifical rule 
over not only nearly the whole of the previous Asian 
and African dominions of Justinian, but over the 
whole of the Persian monarchy besides 1 

Nay, how would not the mind have been turned 
inwardly upon itself, if those who were principal 
actors in the infuriated, and often bloody, religious 
contests in matters of mere form or opinion, among 
the Christians, which are so strongly identified with 
the shores of the Mediterranean, could have re¬ 
turned—during those periods of the Saracenic occu¬ 
pation in which Christianity along the shores of Af¬ 
rica had become wholly extinguished , and in which 
along the whole remaining stretch of the Mediter- 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 197 

TABLE V. 

ranean coast up to the very walls of Constantinople, 
the professors of Christianity, of whatever creed or 
denomination, were now reduced to the utterance 
only of a still, small, and humble voice—to have 
beheld the professors of a totally new faith , on 
the very same African and Syrian shores,- already 
embroiled and divided among themselves into 
equally violent and interminably hostile religious 
sects or parties ! While we, in the north-west of 
Europe, can he said to have changed our reli¬ 
gion of State hut once, that is, from Paganism, in 
some of its various forms and modifications, to 
Christianity, the State religions of most of the 
nations of those regions of the East which we are 
considering have been radically changed no less 
than three , and in some cases four, times. In Jeru¬ 
salem, for example, during the Jewish predominancy, 
the State religion was the religion of Moses; during 
the Roman occupation. Paganism was the religion 
of the State; again, under the Moslems, Muham¬ 
madanism; and, during the Christian occupation 
by the Crusaders, Christianity. 

Geographically , the sweeping changes that had 
taken place in the course of 400 years (and how 
short are these in the boundless expanse of time) 
might best he read in the progressional maps of 
political geography, which I have already announced 
my intention of publishing. These changes are 
stated hereunder, viz.: in the year 400 after Christ 
the world, in its universal colouring of red, is 
seen yet to belong to the Caesars (or Kaisers); in 


198 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

the year 500 the western half of their dominion is 
expunged, and replaced by a motley assemblage of 
new nations: in 600 the universal sovereignty of 
the Romans seems again to he erected; for the 
Vandals of Northern Africa have been overwhelmed 
or expelled, and the islands of the Mediterranean, 
as well as nearly the whole of Italy, again own the 
Roman rule. 

But lastly, looking at the world in the year 800, 
we find that the sceptre of universal sway has 
already long been transferred from the feeble hand 
of the Caesar to the vigorous arm of the Saracen. 

And chronologically, if we retrace our steps, 
we shall find that the whole of the most interesting 
and brilliant portion of the history of the Saracen 
Empire is comprised within about 220 years, viz. 
from 622 down to A1 Mutasem, 841, in the first 
period or great compartment of modern time; the 
flourishing period of this modem empire thus occu¬ 
pying about the same amount of years as the 
ancient Persian monarchy and the contemporaneously 
flourishing republics of Greece, viz. 222 years, from 
the 555s to the 333s. At the head of Table V., 
which dates from 476 after Christ, and even down 
to the year 622, we find that the Arabs or Saracens 
are but mere shepherdizing, camel-driving, or wildly 
roving and marauding stragglers on a wide sandy 
waste; that, united into one stream, or rather tor¬ 
rent, and impelled outwards by Muhammad, they 
speedily gather into their bed other streams of 
population, and swell, before arriving at the .central 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 199 

TABLE Y. 

period of that Table, into majestic grandeur; and 
onwards they roll in one grand and still accumu¬ 
lating breadth of waters, until, towards the close of 
the fifth Table, we perceive, by a delta of sectional 
columns, that the pride and the power of their 
empire have passed away. For great empires, like 
the Nile and the Ganges, and other great rivers, 
commencing by hardly cognizable streamlets, mostly, 
before they are lost in the ocean, waste their weight, 
force, and magnificence by breaking into a delta of 
branches, which leaves as utterly undistinguishable 
as was its original source, its final parental channel. 

But even in its delta, the Arab Empire, although 
it ceased to hold a united paramountship of power 
in three quarters of the globe, offers signs of its 
previous vastitude and strength; for in its very 
wreck, in the tenth century, we behold in the 
“TRIPLE DIVISION OF THE KHALIFAT” three separate 
sovereign States in the three several quarters of the 
old world; viz. one in Asia , under the House of 
Abbas (black the badge), to 1258; one in Africa , 
under the Fatimites (green the badge), to 1171, 
ruling from the Atlantic to the Bed Sea; and one 
in Europe , under the Ommiades (white the badge), 
to 1038. 

And even after the Ommiades became extinct, in 
1038, the Arabs continued to hold the ascendency, 
both in religion and political power, in the peninsula 
of Europe, until the battle of Tolosa, in which the 
united Christian States were at length victorious. 
The date of this.battle, which changed the political 


200 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

and religious destiny of Spain and Portugal, is easy 
of affixment in memory, having occurred in 12 12, 
or the year of the two twelves , three years only 
before Magna Charta, 1215, and 501 years after 
the conquest of the peninsula by Tarilc and Musa, 
in 711 ; and down even to 1492, the year of the 
discovery of America, it will readily he recollected 
that the Arabs exercised regal power in Granada, 
from that Al Hamra palace which was the last seat 
of their European rule, and from the remains of 
which the highly talented Mr. Owen Jones has 
furnished us with so many tasteful illustrations of 
its former decorative splendour. Thus, in all , the 
Arabs exercised sovereign power, upon a larger or 
smaller scale, in Spain, from 711 to 1492, or during 
781 years. The taking of Granada, by Gonzalo , 
“ the great captain ” of the age, was witnessed by 
Columbus before he embarked in the most daring 
voyage that ever was undertaken by man. 

But it is not the Saracen sway alone that we 
behold thus narrowed or divided at the close of the 
first compartment of modem time; for contempo¬ 
raneously the empire of the fighting Franks—the 
coevous conquerors with the Arabs in this first 
period of modern time—also divides into various 
new kingdoms, as Germany , France , the Bur¬ 
gundies, and northern Italy. And this Prankish 
monarchy, it will be remembered, alone it was which 
in 732 prevented the Arabs from bestriding with 
their power every acre in Europe that had ever 
acknowledged the old Roman rule; for if the broad 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 201 

TABLE V. 

green column of tlie Frankish monarchy had not 
already been organized, what resistance could the 
other feeble columns of that period, split and re¬ 
split as they were again within themselves, have 
opposed to a power which in its very infancy had 
already swept away the monarchy of the Persians, 
and crushed the eastern empire of the Romans, the 
capital alone, saved by tlie Greek fire, 676, re¬ 
maining unsurrendered ? 

The Arabs, as we have already had occasion to 
observe, had, during the rule of the House of 
Ommia, victoriously borne the Crescent into the 
very heart of France. In the south of France they 
so long occupied so considerable a tract, having 
Narbonne as the immediate seat of government, 
that, from the mouth of the Garonne to the mouths 
of the Rhone, the inhabitants had assumed the 
manners and adopted the religion of Arabia; and 
the possession of this tract rendered the Khalif of 
Damascus at once the sovereign of Samarkand (with 
the Eden around it), and the lord of the vineyards 
of Gascony and of the city of Bourdeaux. Nay, at 
one period, the Arab conquests were pushed east¬ 
ward beyond the Rhone; and northward, from the 
Atlantic and Mediterranean, they swept down all 
resistance up to Sens, on the Yonne, and Tours, on 
the Loire, and stood at the same time before Lyons 
tm&Besangon; and it was the hard-fought victory 
of Tours—this triumph at last of the heavy liam- 
mermg Frankish mace over the rapid Arab Jerreed, 
in 732 (110 years after the Hejira, 622, and exactly 


202 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

100 years after Muhammad's death , in 632) —alone 
that prevented the Arabs from subjecting the rest of 
France. In the words of Gibbon, “ a victorious 
line of march had been prolonged above a thousand 
miles, from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of 
the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would 
have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland 
and the Highlands of Scotland.” “ The Rhine is,” 
says he, ‘‘not more impassable than the Nile or 
Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed 
without a naval combat into the mouth of the 
Thames.” And, we may add, that, once in the 
Thames, they must very speedily have seated them¬ 
selves down upon London Stone; and we should 
thus most probably have seen, at this day, a good 
many more Saracens’ Heads than one on the London 
Snow Hill. Next in their sweep homewards, north¬ 
ward of the Mediterranean, there was no power either 
in Italy or beyond the Adriatic that was capable of 
arresting their progress, the Roman power having 
long been so effectually broken that Constantinople 
was itself, as already stated, besieged by the Arabs 
in 070 , being exactly 44 years after Muhammad’s 
demise, 632. The reason why the Arabs never, 
after the defeat of Tours, 732, renewed their at¬ 
tempt (on a competent scale) for reducing the whole 
of Europe to subjection will be sufficiently obvious 
when we recollect that, within 17 years after that 
defeat, the great revolution which precipitated the 
Ommiades from the seat of power and elevated the 
House of Abbas , in 749, was the occasion of Spain 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 203 

TABLE V. 

being erected into an independent Arab sovereignty 
or klialifat from 755, and that the insurgent ruler 
of this province naturally bent his thoughts and his 
arms to the repulse of the legions of the Abbassides 
rather than to the extension of the Arab sway be¬ 
yond the Pyrenees; and thus the rock of Gibraltar 
became thenceforth rather the embattled block house 
against , than the regular landing place for, further 
reinforcements for the Arab armies of Spain. Such/ 
then, as we have described them to have been, 
were the splendid conquests which the Arabs ac¬ 
tually achieved, and such the imminent peril which 
overhung the rest of Europe; for Christianity in 
Europe, thus wonderfully saved, stood wondrously 
imperilled. 

Measuring the Arab Empire simply from the 
Pyrenees as its north-western boundary, we find it 
covers a continuous tract, over which, to reach its 
eastern extremity on the confines of Tatary and 
India, required a journey of 200 days, or about 
7 calendar months, or along a continuous expanse 
of 5250 English statute miles line measure; and if 
to this we add, say the allowance of one-fourth for 
road measure (for the usual allowance between road 
and line measure with geographers is, as Mr. John 
Arrowsmith informs me, from one-fifth to one-fourth, 
according to circumstances, upon the whole dis¬ 
tance), we shall behold before us a route of 6562 
English statute miles, along the whole extent of 
which the Muhammadan faith had produced a 


204 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

general resemblance of manners and opinions; 
and along the whole extent of which, excepting in 
the transit across the subject province of Persia , 
the Arabian language had been adopted as the 
national tongue. And thus the earliest Oriental 
empire of modern time, far outstripping the ante¬ 
cedent empires of Cyrus and Alexander, might 
fairly compete in its diversified territorial magnitude 
with the widest extent of Roman rule in its proudest 
period of united grandeur. 

And if thus wonderful were the successes of the 
Arab arms, still more widely branched and far more 
permanently fixed have been the triumphs of the 
Arab faith; for even at this day, about a thousand 
years since the political empire of the Arabs was 
dissolved, the religion of Muhammad remains, nay, 
triumphantly prevails, from the Atlantic into the 
heart of India, and again southward into the centre 
of Africa. 

For the Arabs, who with one arm had uprooted 
the New-Persian Empire, and with the other wrested 
dominion out of the hands of the Romans, had at 
one point threatened to weigh down Christianity, 
while at another they attempted to subvert the 
firmly-organized and strongly-cemented religion of 
the Brahmans in India; and the Arab faith did, in 
effect, intermediately, almost wholly sweep away or 
scatter into fragments for ever the religion of Zer- 
dusht, or Zoroaster. It has indeed been roundly 
calculated, that Muhammadanism was at one period 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 205 

TABLE V. 

professed by about one-half of the total popula¬ 
tion of that portion of the globe which is geographi¬ 
cally designated the Old World. 

One more chronological remark only I have to 
offer before we quit this intertextive compartment of 
historic time, namely, that the same 888 which serve 
so conveniently as a stronghold to the memory for 
the eras at once of the breaking up or final division 
of the Arab and Frankish empires after Christ, 
will (although so widely sundered in time) instan¬ 
taneously bear the memory back to the three eights 
before Christ, when another great monarchy of its 
day, namely, the first Assyrian, was, on the fall of 
Sardanapalus, also broken up; and conjoining the 
two periods of 888 before and 888 after Christ, we 
shall perceive a lapse of 1776 years between the 
ruin or fall of the first widely-extended monarchy 
of the earliest compartment of antiquity , and the 
fall or rapid decline of the earliest vast monarchy, 
viz. the Saracenic, of the first Table of modern 
time; both these empires being also geographically 
identified in their origin with nearly the same 
character of contiguous territorial surface. 

We must not, however, in thus classing chrono¬ 
logically and locally in our recollection these two, 
ancient and modern, empires together, fail to recollect 
the prodigious contrast in the ultimate extent of their 
territorial surface; for though the Assyrian might in 
his day assume to all around him the style of a uni¬ 
versal sovereign, he was but a pigmy when placed by 
the side of the Saracen. The conquest of the whole 


206 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

territory of the Assyrian would have been but the 
work of a few weeks, or of a few days, to the Arab 
arms; nay, such a sword as Khaled’s would, at a 
single swoop, have laid such an empire as the 
Assyrian in the dust for ever. Having thus run 
over the rise and grandeur, and taken a sort of 
precognition of the fall, of the mighty empire of 
the Saracens, we propose, in some portion of the 
next section of our work, to take a survey of its 
dissolution, which survey will naturally introduce 
to our early subsequent flotiee the empire of the 
Turks; for the gradual fall of the Saracenic 
empire is closely interwoven with the gradual 
ascent of the Turkish. 

The following extracts will furnish specimens of 
the style in which the Kuran is composed. 

“It is He who sendeth down from heaven rain¬ 
water, whereof ye have to drink, and from which 
plants, whereof ye feed your cattle, receive their 
nourishment. And by means thereof causeth corn, 
and olives, and palm-trees, and grapes, and all kinds 
of fruits to spring forth for you. Surely herein is 
a sign of the divine power and wisdom unto people 
who consider. And He hath subjected the night 
and day to your service; and the sun, and the 
moon, and the stars, which are compelled to serve 
by his command. Verily herein are signs unto 
people of understanding. And He hath also given 
you dominion over whatever He hath created for you 
in the earth, distinguished by its different colour. 
Surely herein is a sign unto people who reflect. It 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 207 

TABLE Y. 

is He who hath subjected the sea unto you, that ye 
might eat fish thereout, and take from thence orna¬ 
ments for you to wear; and thou seest the ships 
ploughing the waves thereof, that ye may seek to 
enrich yourselves of his abundance by commerce; 
and that ye might give thanks. And He hath 
thrown upon the earth mountains firmly rooted, 
lest it should move with you, and also rivers and 
paths that ye might be directed; and He hath like¬ 
wise ordained marks whereby men may know their 
way; and they are directed by the stars. Shall 
God, therefore, who createth, he as he who createth 
not ? Do ye not therefore consider ? If ye attempt 
to reckon up the favours of God, ye shall not he 
able to compute their number. God is surely 
gracious and merciful; and God knoweth that which 
ye conceal, and that which ye publish. But the 
idols which ye invoke, besides God, create nothing, 
hut are themselves created. They are dead, and 
not living; neither do they understand when they 
shall be raised. Your God is one God.” 

^ ^ ^ ^ 

“Dost thou not perceive that all creatures both 
in heaven and earth praise God; and the birds also, 
extending their wings ? Every one knoweth his 
prayer and his praise; and God knoweth that 
which they do. Unto God helongeth the kingdom 
of heaven and earth; and unto God shall he the 
return at the last day. Dost thou not see that God 
gently driveth forward the clouds, and gathereth 
them together, and then layeth them on heaps ? 


208 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE Y. 

Thou also seest the rain which falleth from the 
midst thereof; and God sendeth down from heaven 
as it were mountains, wherein there is hail; He 
striketh therewith whom He pleaseth, and turneth 
the same away from whom He pleaseth; the bright¬ 
ness of his lightning wanteth hut little of taking 
away the sight. God shifteth the night and the 
day; verily herein is an instruction unto those who 
have sight/' 

^ ’fc 

“ Whatever is in heaven and earth singeth 
praise unto God; and He is mighty and wise. His 
is the kingdom of heaven and earth; He giveth 
life, and He putteth to death; and He is almighty. 
He is the first and the last; the manifest and the 
hidden : and He knoweth all things. It is He who 
created the heavens and the earth in six days; and 
then ascended his throne. He knoweth that which 
entereth into the earth, and that which issueth out 
of the same; and that which descendeth from 
heaven, and that which ascendeth thereto: and He 
is with you, wheresoever ye be: for God seeth that 
which ye do. His is the kingdom of heaven and 
earth; and unto God shall all things return. He 
causeth the night to succeed the day, and He 
causeth the day to succeed the night; and He 
knoweth the innermost part of men’s breasts.” 

As we are now drawing near the close of the two 
sections of the first book or part of the Precep¬ 
tive and Illustrative COMPANION to my tabular- 
ized presentment of universal historical, and literary 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 209 

TABLE V. 

and artistical time, in 25 royal folio sheets, let us 
test the ocular system, which I have been endea¬ 
vouring to elucidate and recommend, by the ordinary 
rules of practical life. On entering the magnificent 
Crystal Palace of 1851, did any individual or any 
family stand gazing at or minutely examining, for 
the whole day, the first stall they arrived at ? 
Assuredly not; the natural impulse of all was, first 
to take a range over the whole edifice, to mark its 
structure and classified distributive arrangement, 
and to catch a hasty first-sight glimpse at all the 
most striking phenomena of the whole organized 
world of industrial glory—only occasionally arrest¬ 
ing their progress to contemplate some few objects 
of more than ordinary interest; hut largely noting, 
in the route, various other objects for their future 
more attentive and more leisurely survey and ex¬ 
amination. 

And thus, too, it is that, when we first enter the 
gorgeous temple of universal historic time, we would 
endeavour rapidly to gain a first-sight glance at the 
whole classified range of great events, and their cor¬ 
responding dates, and the distributive progression, 
and fluctuating changes, of empire; marking for 
future more leisurely and amplified reading all 
those hold features of the past which the most 
vividly strike us; and only occasionally arresting 
ourselves, in our first-sight progress, by phenomena 
too remarkable or attractive for us to pass onwards 
without, at least, bestowing upon them some mo¬ 
mentary, or cursory, attention and inquiry. 


210 


HISTORIC MEMORY". 

TABLE Y. 


CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. . 

I find that in treating, in the first section of this 
work, of “ Man in barbarism,” I have neglected to 
advert to one very remarkable trait of aboriginal 
life in North America, interestingly described by Mr. 
Catlin, viz. the wholly untaught and perfectly inbred 
daring and adroitness of the natives in wild horse¬ 
manship. Even the veriest urchins, as soon nearly 
as they can run, laughing at all riding-school pre¬ 
tensions, outdo in daring and skill the boldest riders 
of Europe; creeping stealthily through the high 
grass, they suddenly dart, or climb, themselves up 
by the mane, or otherwise, to the affrighted wild 
horse’s bare hack, to which, through brake and briar, 
brushwood and forest, like little unbound Mazeppas, 
they firmly and fearlessly cling, until they choose to 
end their frolic by dextrously throwing themselves 
laughingly off amidst the high grass, or until the 
half-frantic horse falls down through terror and 
exhaustion. Connected with this wondrous fact, 
this expert daring, this heroism of horsemanship, is 
the still more remarkable peculiarity of the magic 
treatment, by the wild natives, of the wild horse. 
They do not “ break ” the wild horse with the 
double-bitted and tightened gag , with the spur, and 
the specially-constructed lash, but by simply 
breathing into the nostrils of the poor affrighted 
animal, generally, it may be supposed, when in a state 
of great terror or exhaustion, which changes him at 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 211 

TABLE Y. 

once from wildness to the gentlest tractability, 
making him thenceforth perfectly subservient to all 
the required uses of the native. A fact, which in 
Europe, through millenniums of years, has escaped 
the keenest observation alike of our ablest natural 
historians, of our most practised horse-trainers and 
breakers, and, above all, of the most wily and 
knowing of our European horse-dealers, whose 
razVapplied remedy for terror or restiffness pro¬ 
bably would be to pour water into the poor animal’s 
ear. Thus useful may be made the practical study 
of the habits (or idiosyncrasy) of animal life! 

Severity , which is supposed to cost the least 
trouble (and a mighty element this trouble-avoidance 
is in influencing the affairs of man), is but too often, 
with us, the training which the teacher administers, 
when soothing, and kind, and gentle treatment is 
what the learner requires. 

The force and skill, too, with which, when on 
horseback at full speed, the aboriginal American 
can shoot an arrow quite through the body of a 
buffalo, would, if not so undeniably known to be a 
fact, appear perfectly incredible. 

In readverting to “ Man in barbarism,” and to 
Mr. Catlin, as the able illustrator of the history and 
habits of savage life, I cannot refrain from observ¬ 
ing, that, had the British Government been at all 
alive to the interests of historic science, to the 
national requirement of adopting some more effi¬ 
cient principle than has hitherto been in operation 
for the advancement of a nationally-advantageous 


212 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

prosecution of historic study, they would not, and 
could not, have missed the golden opportunity of 
purchasing, and thus securing to the British people, 
Mr. Catlin’s North-American collection, to form one 
of the entrance compartments to the great study of 
history, filled with such palpabilities of illustration, 
as would be best calculated to awaken reflection in 
the public mind, on those industrial energies and 
those great mental appliances which have gradually 
so wonderfully separated cultured and civilized, from 
ultra-savage life. Such reflections naturally tend¬ 
ing, as the next step, to draw the mind onwards to 
inquiry into man’s history in its more advanced 
stages. 

That such an opportunity, I repeat, should nation¬ 
ally have been altogether neglected, an opportunity 
which may never more return, must naturally be a 
source of lasting regret to every real lover of the 
advancement of the systematic study of history. 

But in a country where, without any inflicted 
punishment, any expressed reprobation, or even any 
arraignment of inquiry, so gross and so monstrous 
a violation of all the great moralities of history as 
was exercised at Winchester in 1788 is permitted, 
it could hardly be expected that any of the Govern¬ 
ments or Administrations that have existed since 
1842, about which period, as far as I can recollect, 
Mr. Catlin arrived in this country, should have had 
either a just sense of the value of forming, or the 
rudimental capability to form, the beginning of any 
systematic organization for conducting the popular 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 213 

TABLE V. 

mind into the great and beneficial, the expansive 
and philosophic, field of historical contemplation. 

In casually adverting, pp. 14, 15 of this work, 
to the cumulative monster-masses of undigested 
legislation which we have upreared in this realm, 
throwing into the shade the combined legislative 
diligence of all other nations of the earth, I might 
have further instanced that the Acts of Parliament 
in force, relating to the Excise Department alone, 
amounted some years ago to from 1500 to 1600! 
Surely these would admit of a little hydraulic con¬ 
densation. 

Then, again, such is the crude precipitancy with 
which we hasten on in our career of law-enacting 
for such an empire as Britain, that in <c a Marriage 
Act Amendme?U Act” (during the regency or reign 
of George IV.),w T hich rendered the illegally officiat¬ 
ing clergyman liable to seven , or more, years' trans¬ 
portation , it was gravely provided in a subsequent 
clause, that one-half of this penalty should go to 
the informer (and serve him right too), and the 
other half to the Crown! 

In arriving at the conclusion of the Second Sec¬ 
tion of this work, I may observe that I have endea¬ 
voured so to conduct the mind of the reader, whether 
student or adult, over the diversified surface of his¬ 
torical time, as to show that so wonderful is creation 
as exhibited in the various character, the attributes, 
the impulses, habits, and multiform condition of 
man, that to behold but one days working of the 
machinery of human life over the whole surface of 


214 HISTORIC MEMORY. 

TABLE V. 

the globe, would supply matter of reflection for the 
most lengthened after-life. Nay, the action and 
results of ambition alone, in all their wondrous 
varieties, might form a subject of perpetual histori¬ 
cal study to every reflecting mind; and yet how 
often the latest study of mankind is man. 

Our rapid discursive ranges from Zone to Zone, 
from Pole to Pole, will have rendered it sufficiently 
manifest, that a leading object of the present work 
has been to encourage the mind, in the reading of 
history, to a perpetual exercise of that generaliza¬ 
tion, interwoven with corroboration, which shall 
ever make one recollection comhinatively and cor- 
rohoratively call up another: and we have, too, 
sought to show that, sometimes, even the seemingly 
most widely-sundered points may comhinatively act 
as potent levers to memory. 

We have moreover endeavoured to place to view, 
that some of the boldest elements of historic recol¬ 
lection are directly and corrohoratively connected 
with two of the most remarkable and expansive 
features of the earth’s surface, viz. the desert and 
the ocean—the seas of sand, and realms of water. 

In fine, throughout this work and its detached 
supplementary “ Tabular Teacher ” the primary 
object has been illustratively to demonstrate, that 
the natural mnemonics of history rest upon 

GENERALIZATION, CORROBORATION, and TABULAR- 
IZATION; all necessarily involved in that 
“ Ocular Mechanism of Historic Memory,” 


EARLIEST MODERN TIME. 

TABLE Y. 


215 


or that 

O CULARIZATION 

of the whole surface of time, which I have so 
laboriously introduced to the notice of the British 
public, and toward the more general adoption, and 
more effective use of which, as a system alike for 
purposes of reference and study, the present publi¬ 
cation of the “ Phenomena of History,” and the 
thereunto appended “ Tabular Teacher,” were 
expressly undertaken. 


END OF BOOK I. SECT. II. 


Post 8 vo, price 4s. 6c?. boards , with a fine Profile of 
“ the illustrious ” Goethe. 

LETTERS FROM WITZLAR, 

. DEVELOPING 

THE AUTHENTIC PARTICULARS 

ON WHICH THE 

‘‘SORROWS OF WERTER" 

ARE FOUNDED. 


BY 

MAJOR BELL. 


“The information which the present work affords was 
obtained by Major Bell during a residence of several months 
on the spot; and he communicates it in a style equally 
pleasing and unassuming.”— New Monthly Magazine , New 
Series , No. 9. 

“The celebrity which the author of the ‘Sorrows’ has 
since obtained, and the great popularity of this book, make 
an account of it a ‘curious leaf in the history of litera¬ 
ture.’ ”— New Edinburgh Review , October , 1821. 


LONDON: 

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR,* AND SOLD BY 

ROBERT BALDWIN, 47, PATERNOSTER ROW. 





ADVERTISEMENT. 


The following is a literal copy of the descriptive 
announcement , officially transmitted to the Execu¬ 
tive Committee of the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 
May, 1, 1851, of the coloured royal folio tabular 
work, frequently referred to in the “First-Sight 
Phenomena of Historic Time,” as well as in the 
“Tabular Teacher of the Theory and Thrift of 
Combinative and Corroborative Historic Memory.” 


GREAT EXHIBITION 

OF THE 

WORKS OF INDUSTRY OF ALL NATIONS, 
May 1 , 1851. 


Class 17, No. 203; but exhibited, for the greater convenience of 
wall space, in the Mining Section of the South-Western Avenue 
of the Crystal Palace. Class I. 

Vividly Illustrated and Impressed by an Original 
Principle of Colouring, 

TWENTY-FIVE ROY. FOLIO CHARTS OF UNIVERSAL 
HISTORY, UNIVERSAL LITERATURE, AND THE SEVERAL 
SCHOOLS OF PAINTING, 

presenting, in separate series, the correlative and pro¬ 
gressive structure of the whole Tabular Surface of 

L 




218 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


Historical and Biographic Time, are exhibited by 
Major James Bell, in Seven Bolls (as well as in 
their more generally-used Book-Form ), covering a wall- 
space of about 16 ft. by 14 ft., under the following 
general heading, in white lettering upon an ultra- 
marine blue ground, viz.— 

“MAJOR BELLS OCULAR MECHANISM OF HISTORIC MEMORY, 

“ giving to Historical, Literary, and Artistic Time, by 
“ Tabular Presentment, a visible Surface ; an em- 
“ phatic change of ‘ Form and Pressure,’in its consecu- 
“ tive Grand Eras ; an Ocular Classification, of Syn- 
“ chronistic Structure, continuously extending over a 
“ surface of nearly 4000 years; and giving to the 
“ World of Nations! —of Events !—of Individual Re- 
“ nown! in every sphere of celebrity; in collateral 
“ Columns, and in Coeval Strata; their Correlative, 
“ Chronological Affixment, their Ethnographic Station, 
“ on the Rolls of the Universal Historic, Literary, and 
“ Artistic Memorials of Man ! ” 


This work, which addresses itself to the practical 
attention of the inquiring, and, especially, of the 
Parental public, as well from the great Educational 
Advantages which it offers, as from the vast amount of 
Mental and Mechanical Labour that has been bestowed 
upon its Systematised Construction, embodies, in its 
consecutively marked Grand Eras—in its Original and 
Specific Principle of Colouring—in its graduated 
Varieties of Type—its numerous Mnemonical Appli¬ 
ances, and in the rigid Synchronistic Unity of its 
Collaturally-spread Columns of Nations—the earliest 



ADVERTISEMENT. 


219 


attempt, in the British dominions, to reduce the great 
Study of History from a Chaos of Complexity to the 
Regularity of a System. 

Blank Outline Tables, showing, in themselves, the 
ever-fluctuating Form of the Surface of Progressional 
Time, and designed for filling up in Tablette practice, 
it may be added, is part of the System of Major Bell’s 
“ Ocular Mechanism of Historic and Biographic Me¬ 
mory.” 


In reference to this laborious work, and the con¬ 
comitant attempt to improve the Practice, by Systema¬ 
tising the Principle, of Historic Teaching, we extract 
the following notice from the “ Oxford Journal ” of the 
3rd November, 1849, viz :— 

“ A work entitled ‘ A View of Universal History, 
“Universal Literature, and the Several Schools of 
“ Painting,’ by Major James Bell, dedicated by special 
“ command to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and which 
“ has reached its fifth edition, has been brought before 
“ our notice by the talented author, who, it will be 
“ recollected, took a prominent part in the proceedings 
“ of the Alfred Jubilee, at Wantage. The work in 
“ question is certainly a national one, and so compre- 
“ hensive in its character, that the history of every 
“ country on the face of the habitable globe, from the 
“ earliest period of time, is seen at one view. It has 
“ become a Text Book at the public schools, and as a 
“ work of reference, for all who feel any interest in 
“ Ancient or Modern History, it is without a parallel. 
*« The late Head Master of the Richmond Grammar 
“ School , Yorkshire, the Rev. James Tate , subsequently 
“ Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's, spontaneously gave 


220 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


“ the following well-known Autographic Testimonial 
“ respecting this publication, * after two years' daily use 
“ 1 of it with his senior pupils,' viz.:— 

“ ‘ It is a work on Universal History, ancient and 
“ * modern, of the greatest usefulness possible, nor can 
“ ‘ any library be complete without it. I only lament, 
“ ‘/or the sake of Major Bell, that such a Book, at such 
“ ‘ a Price, can never repay him for the pains which he 
“ ‘ has bestowed on its publication ; its value to Historical 
“ ‘ Literature is inestimable.' 

“ The work is printed in a Tabular Form, and by the 
“ aid of colouring is rendered still more intelligible and 
“ easy of access on any point of History in any country; 
“ it is got up in every department with great accuracy, 
“ and is of itself an imperishable monument of the 
“ labour, industry, and ability of an individual who has 
“ devoted a life-time to promote and facilitate the Study 
“of History, in a manner never before attempted, or 
“ with such signal success.” 


FIFTH EDITION. 


Price, Coloured, in the Roy. Fol. Book-Form, hand¬ 
somely and strongly half-bound, 21. 10s.—to Sub¬ 
scribers, 45s. 

Price, Chart-Wise, on rollers, for suspension in School 
Rooms or Studies, mounted on calico, coloured and 
varnished, 51. 5s. 


Address, Major Bell, care of Messrs. A. M‘Farlane and 
Sons, Book-Binders, No. 10, Old Bailey, London. 


Woodfall and Kinder, Printers, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London. 











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